Model United Nations of Munich 2024 – The difficult decision between world peace, Paulaner Spezi and the question if clapping is in order
Once again, our school had the opportunity to take part in this year’s MUNoM conference, in which 15 students of our school got the chance to participate in a simulation of the United Nations Organisation (UNO) where they can write, present and debate resolutions for our world’s most pressing issues.
The countries our students could represent last week as delegates were as follows:
- Lebanon
- Myanmar
- United Arab Emirates
Distributed into 7 different committees (GA 1-6; ECOSOC 1-3) the delegates got to discuss various exciting topics ranging from social over cultural questions to criminal justice in which the adolescent politicians specialize.
Day 1:
After eagerly researching and preparing resolutions for their respective topics, we started the journey to Munich on Monday the 11th November at 8.00. After a nearly six-hour train ride, we arrived at the train station of Munich at 13.45. After checking into the hotel, and since Munom would not start until Tuesday, we made a trip into the city center.
While some raced to KFC as soon as they stepped foot off the subway, others decided to actually follow the previously planned activity: Climbing the tower “Alter Peter”. Four of us walked up the absolutely ridiculous number of stairs, an effort we were rewarded for with a beautiful sight over the city of Munich. In the evening all of us had a nice dinner at “Schiller Bräu”!
Day 2:
On Tuesday, the long-awaited conference finally started! After arriving at the Hanns-Seidel Stiftung, we received our identification-badges, following a short introduction and getting distributed across the different committees we began to lobby. On the search for allies, called “co-submitters”, we discussed and exchanged our previously written resolutions with the delegates from our designated committees.
Later that day, the opening ceremony started, where we were being welcomed through speeches. Additionally, some of us, who volunteered to be the ambassadors for our countries, even got the chance to hold a speech ourselves in front of all other delegates.
The last point on the agenda was entertaining a certain tradition at MUNoM, the so-called “Gossip Box”, a small box where everyone could throw note papers into with the latest gossip, compliments, insults, poems and more.
Day 3:
The day of debating finally came. After arriving at the European School of Munich, all delegates were split up into different rooms representing each committee, we continued with a bit more lobbying and refining of the resolutions until we could potentially hand them in to be checked by the executive staff. Following the lunchbreak, the exciting part began as we started to discuss the first approved resolutions. The involvement of each participant varied greatly as although everyone was urged to make at least one statement, most committees were dominated by a few valiant delegates, namely from China, Russia and the USA who were the most experienced. This, however, didn’t mean that it wasn’t exciting to watch some of them going to ridiculous lengths to formulate or defend their arguments.
Later in the evening we went to an escape room, where, distributed into 3 groups, everyone of us faced a different challenge. Not to brag, but the authors of this text were the fastest ;)
Day 4:
Day four was the personal favourite of the authors, since it was the most entertaining due to everybody getting very extreme in their beliefs and actions.
For example, in the GA3 committee, Russia in cooperation with China and Lebanon sent out about 30 notepapers with a threat of nuking your country if you were to not vote in favour of their resolution which was presented afterwards. Unfortunately, this backfired horrendously as the delegate of Thailand in response to that made some “amendments” to the Russian resolution. Or to say it clearly: He removed everything Russia previously proposed and replaced it with an insult to Russian diplomacy. Due to a clear voting majority this amendment was accepted, and Russia was left to present a resolution which only purpose it was to insult Russia.
The fourth day also included the annual MUNoM-Party. Students celebrated mostly by re with their new or old acquaintances and/or danced in the center of the club. Certainly, upsetting for some of the thirsty delegates was the bartenders leaving them a note reading:
“Sorry, no alcohol today
Water 1,-€”
Day 5:
On the fifth day all the committees merged to form two big committees to discuss the resolutions which were voted on the days before to determine which of them is going to be approved by the entirety of the delegates.
Subsequently one of the two committees, the so-called “General Assembly Forum”, got the assignment to quickly think up a resolution for a simulation scenario in which Israel has been attacked by a high technological bioweapon. We were then supposed to contain the outbreak of the sickness resulting from the attack.
Unfortunately, we had to leave at 15.10 before getting to witness the conclusion of the resolution and even the closing ceremony – we made our way to the train station in time and took the train back to Knittelfeld, looking back to a week of (too) little sleep, great encounters, heated debates and culinary days in Munich!
For those wanting to find out more about what we have done and experienced the past couple of days, make sure to check out the iconic MUNoM Times as well as MUNoM’s official Instagram page:
https://pdfs-of-qr-codes.s3.amazonaws.com/VjspPG.pdf
https://pdfs-of-qr-codes.s3.amazonaws.com/ha2ldy.pdf
https://pdfs-of-qr-codes.s3.amazonaws.com/jGv8sW.pdf
Seitz Daniel & Wotke Sebastian, 6b
