AG

Model United Nati­ons

Pro­fi­le of goals and acti­vi­ties,
re. Inter­na­tio­nal Eco-School Application/Authentication

For 15 years now, the Otto-Hahn-Gym­na­si­um Gif­horn has been sen­ding dele­ga­tes to Model United Nati­ons Con­fe­ren­ces, most­ly in the Nether­lands and Ger­ma­ny. The­se con­fe­ren­ces simu­la­te United Nati­ons Gene­ral Assem­bly ses­si­ons as well as diver­se UN com­mit­tee ses­si­ons and are atten­ded inter­na­tio­nal­ly, by dele­ga­tes from schools both Euro­pean and over­seas. Wee­kly mock deba­tes at our school afford MUN club mem­bers a chan­ce to pre­pa­re for the­se con­fe­ren­ces.

With Eng­lish as the working lan­guage for deba­te and usual­ly also for infor­mal mee­tings out­side the actu­al con­fe­rence, MUN con­fe­ren­ces offer a uni­que pos­si­bi­li­ty for stu­dents to train and impro­ve their Eng­lish-lan­guage skills and argu­men­ta­ti­ve stra­te­gies in a com­pe­ti­ti­ve and qua­si-rea­listic set­ting. The pre­re­qui­si­te to repre­sent a coun­try dif­fe­rent from one’s own allows dele­ga­tes to recon­si­der estab­lis­hed lines of thought and put them­sel­ves in a dif­fe­rent pair of shoes. The for­mal deba­te advan­ces pos­si­bi­li­ties to com­pa­re and reflect on diver­se inter­pre­ta­ti­ons of cur­rent pro­blems, with the­se inter­pre­ta­ti­ons based on varied social struc­tures, judi­cial tra­di­ti­ons or cul­tu­ral con­vic­tions. Final­ly, MUN con­fe­ren­ces and sup­ple­men­ta­ry spa­re-time acti­vi­ties bring tog­e­ther dele­ga­tes from Euro­pean coun­tries and fur­ther abroad, allowing stu­dents to form friendships and con­nec­tions across bor­ders.

At MUN con­fe­ren­ces, various topics cur­r­ent­ly on the inter­na­tio­nal agen­da are deba­ted. In this con­text, envi­ron­men­tal issu­es play an important role. For examp­le, at Lei­den Model United Nati­ons 2016, our dele­ga­tes to the UN Envi­ron­ment Com­mis­si­on deba­ted issu­es such as “Safe drin­king water in deve­lo­ping coun­tries”, “Fracking”, and “Explo­ring the pos­si­bi­li­ties of geo-engi­nee­ring for coun­ter­ac­ting cli­ma­te chan­ge”. Just as rele­vant, the Spe­cial Con­fe­rence on World Food Secu­ri­ty inclu­ded envi­ron­men­tal topics such as “Redu­cing the use of anti­bio­tics in agri­cul­tu­re”, “Food loss and was­te in MEDCs”, and “Redu­cing post-har­vest food loss in rural are­as”. Accord­in­gly, envi­ron­men­tal topics are also deba­ted at the OLMUN con­fe­rence which we regu­lar­ly visit. This year, our dele­ga­tes to the simu­la­ti­on of the United Nati­ons Envi­ron­ment Pro­gram will be “Asses­sing Gene­tic Engi­nee­ring Regar­ding its Con­se­quen­ces for Agri­cul­tu­re and Nut­ri­ti­on”, and the Third Com­mit­tee of the Gene­ral Assem­bly will be “Deve­lo­ping Gui­de­li­nes for Sus­tainab­le Urban Deve­lo­p­ment”.

Par­ti­ci­pa­ti­on in Model United Nati­ons offers many chan­ces to fur­ther deve­lop both social and lan­guage skills and grow per­so­nal­ly. We belie­ve it ther­eby also allows for valu­able insights into Agen­da 21 topics and the goals of an “Inter­na­tio­nal Eco-School”.

Jan Stol­le (OStR), MUN direc­tor, OHG Gif­horn