Delving into MUN 2022 preparations
As students fill up the meeting room to attend the first gathering of Model United Nations (MUN) 2022, the atmosphere is filled with suspense as everybody waits for the meeting to start. Anxious whispers can be heard all around, and the students from European School of Brussels 1 (EEB1) take seats until there are none left, and the rest of the students must stand and observe from the back of the class.
Finally, the assembly begins, and Mrs. Thomas and Mr. Nicolaidis give the students an introduction on how the MUN works, as there is a wide spread in experience among the students. Soon after, Carolina de la Puente Illieva, president of the Munuccle 2022, and secretary general Céline Alaga, along with some of the chairs of the different committees present themselves and go more into detail on the necessary information needed to participate in MUN. The students are given a guide booklet that helps with researching and debating, and around half an hour into the meeting, the students are given their first and only activity for the day: they must practice the art of formal debates.
Taking a look at the English / Bilingual debate, the students were given a murder case, and they had to make a list from the guiltiest to the least guilty suspect. This gives the students the opportunity to not only train their formal vocabulary, but also awaken their argumentative side as they battle it out to persuade each other and come to a formal agreement. Almost instantly, the students agreed that the killer was the guiltiest, but 2nd to 5th was a split between half the students. After some deliberation, the majority agreed that the husband and the lover were 2nd and 3rd most guilty, followed by the wife and the bystander.
Debate of the week: Murder case
After the debate, I managed to get an interview with Andrew Galea Roberts, future delegate of China in the UN Refugee Agency (HCR). He was glad to have come to this meeting, as he states that “the debate helped me refresh my mind on how to get people to side with me.” Although Andrew was on the losing side, he had still “learned a lot from the experience” and he follows up with “I can imagine how informational this was to the newcomers that are in MUN for the first time”. Finally, he remarks that “researching China is going to be interesting for me, and I already can’t wait for this whole thing to begin!”
The students are already excited for MUN after only the first meeting. Now, we look to the future to see the students embark on their new and exciting adventure of MUN 2022.
Gianluca PRIVITELLI / S7ENa / EEB1 Uccle
