by Ambre FERRIERE, Terminale
Last week LEMUN – for Leyden Model United Nations- hosted its 21st MUN Conference in Leyden and Théo had the honor to be invited !
Indeed, 14 of us went to the Netherlands from December 2nd to 4th to represent 3 different countries : Bangladesh, Belgium and Egypt in 11 different committees :
- First, Third and Fourth General Assembly (GA1/3/4),
- Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC),
- United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP),
- United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF),
- World Health Assembly (WHA),
- United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC),
- Arab League (AL),
- Special Conference on Telecommunication (SpCT),
- and last but not least : my committee, and by far the best, the Human Rights Council (HRC):
Every committee was asked to discuss 3 different topics. I was assigned to the Human rights Committee and we had to vote resolutions on such topics as :
- Protecting the human rights of the LGBTQI+ community,
- Parental rights in determination of the education curriculum,
- The imbalance in police responses to different protest groups.
In the Human Right Committee, I was the delegate of Egypt. That means I was representing the ideas and politics of that particular country. Defending ideas that weren’t mine proved to be pretty complicated but it was interesting to experiment it. It was a bit confusing because the majority of countries had pretty much the same ideas as my country and the result of most of the debate was the restriction of the humans’ rights.
Fortunately, in the real UN all the countries are represented and it is a scenario that cannot possibly happen (if it happened one day, stay locked up at home for EVER…). The debate’s subject was honestly so interesting. It dealt with current and often controversial facts from the news and being the representant of another country lead us to study the questions with a different approach. It is a good way to learn more about a country and its politics. What’s more, I had a really interesting committee with a lot of nice delegates that were incredibly involved and prepared. It allowed the newest to feel self-confident enough and it kept the debate entertaining. It was definitely the greatest experience I had, meeting new people and debating during the whole 3 days. The only thing was time. It was way too short !
French group in LEMUN from Théo :
