生醫系三年級張恩典世界模擬聯合國會議心得感想
研習時間:2011/03/14~2011/03/18
研習地點:新加坡國立大學(SNUS)
活動名稱:World Model United Nation（WMUN）
研習類別:參加國際社團大學
I am Grace En-Tien Chang and I’m a student of Biology at Kaohsiung Medical University. I’m also the founding president of the Kaohsiung Medical University Model United Nations Club (KMUN for short) and head delegate for our club’s ventures to Harvard World Model United Nations (WMUN) in 2010 and 2011.
World MUN in 2010 was held in Taipei. In 2011, it was held in Singapore, from March 14~March 18. World MUN was dreamed up by students from Harvard University two decades ago, and is always more challenging than the domestic MUN events held in Taiwan. This is because it’s held in a different city around the world each year, with student from hundreds of universities and over 50 countries flocking to attend the event. Many of the university students attending are from departments related to politics, law, economics and business, but registration is not limited only to those who study the humanities.
As a delegation from Kaohsiung Medical University, it was more of a challenge for us to train with very little background in International Relations. However, I believe that in order to become a steward of our planet, it is crucial that we do not shut ourselves away from opportunities to understand our world better. Prior to WMUN, our club held classes in Understanding the United Nations, Rules of Procedure, Speech and Researching your topic. When we learnt that we were to represent Tunisia and Burkina Faso in this event, we quickly got to work to understand our countries and our country’s positions on our topics.
This year my partner Michal and I represented Tunisia in DISEC. It was very different from last year as a single delegate, for the committee is much larger and it is much harder for one to be heard within the committee. For larger committees, a great deal of the real negotiations are thus conducted outside the conference room, in smaller working groups.
In the beginning, I felt it was hard for me to participate because the amount of countries seeking to give speeches made it easy for Tunisia to be overlooked. We first had to choose between two topics. One concerning the conflicts surrounding Kosovo’s independence, and the other concerning the relations between drug trafficking and terrorism.
For many of the MUNs, usually regional blocs are formed as a matter of course due to the shared interests that different countries within a region will have. As Tunisia, we have a choice between the Arab League, the African Union and the European Union, to which we have close commercial ties. I finally decided to focus on the out-of-room negotiations while Michal sat in as official spokesperson for Tunisia within the conference room. First I read each bloc’s proposal’s, and then chose the one which I found most reasonable to participate in. It was towards that bloc (the African Union and Latin America) that I contributed my ideas towards. And seeing that they already had two or three people working on the text (typing on laptops), decided to help in negotiating a potential merger with the European Union and the Arab League. The idea is to hopefully come to a greater consensus on one copy of the draft resolution so that DISEC as a body can successfully pass a resolution by the end of the meeting.
One of the things I realized during this exchange was that, yes, it was smart of me to bring a light laptop, but it would be even smarter for me to bring a USB so that we could transfer files more easily, as no internet was allowed within the venue. I also discovered that it’s very useful to wear high heels - it allows you to peer over other people’s shoulder’s more effectively when everyone is reading the same document.
Though for the first two days of the conference I was not actively negotiating outside with everyone else, I found that when I did try to get involved, I was included more quickly because I tried to be helpful. When the African Union was short on someone to negotiate the merger (which turned out to represent few of the country’s desire rather than a general consensus of the African Union), I volunteered to keep an eye on what the EU/AL bloc was doing and serve as a contact person for our bloc. When a few delegates were concerned that the Working Paper of the AU/LA bloc might be objectionable for their countries, I asked them to look over the working paper and list the clauses that they might find objectionable so we could work that into an amendment. I chose to be pragmatic instead of emotional when members in our bloc forgot to include our amendment, and to be willing to drop it when committee time proved short. And most importantly of all, I made it a priority to credit people for their contributions.
I also learned a lot from the other delegates. Many delegates used graphic descriptions to make their speeches more memorable. And it was mesmerizing to watch how one of the delegates skillfully deflected the suspicion and anger from several countries of the African Union concerning a potential merger with another bloc.
It is also very interesting to observe how it takes a great deal of preparation and negotiation in order to formulate resolutions that can reflect the views of most of the countries present. And helped me understand why it is difficult for the Climate Change negotiations to quickly reach the sort of consensus that many environmental groups are calling for.
Without real resources and a real governmental body to reinforce certain positions, delegates of MUN are frequently called upon to design creative solutions to real world problems based on what they know of a country’s position and the international environment. Due to this, MUN has been sometimes critiqued as a educational propagation of the existing fallacies of an old system, by people who believe that the UN is too inefficient and patriarchal to pursue the true justice and peace that is called for in the UN Charter.
A recent Newsweek article mentioned the fact that an apathetic moderate voting population weakens the function of democracy and allows more extreme viewpoints to gain ground. A large percentage of the moderate population in the United States feel unwilling to engage in the daunting task of understanding the political system within their country, and thus they feel alienated from the system and are less willing to participate. Without a moderate voice from the populace, groups that are more aggressive in voicing more extreme viewpoints have a disproportionate sway over the direction of the country.
I personally believe that a better system cannot be designed without first understanding how the existing system works. It is through our participation that we gain skills in understanding how decisions are made, on our behalf, in the international arena. It is also through our participation that we gain an interest in the affairs of our world, and take the first step towards becoming a conscious civic citizen of our planet earth. The participation of youth in UN process will help us move towards monitoring and influencing a better UN system.
Model United Nations doesn’t reflect the real United Nations in that the personal charisma, diplomatic skills and knowledge of a delegate matters much more than the resources that a country has in reality. In this way the Model United Nations reflects more of an ideal of the egalitarian ‘one-country-one-vote’ nature of the United Nations. This fact allows us more room to explore the possibilities in international policies, and to develop our ability to organize, connect, and persuade. It is also a place where lasting friendships are made - across nations and ethnic groups - and forges a stronger sense of the community and purpose that we as human beings on this planet must have in order to face the challenges of this century.
研習地點:新加坡國立大學(SNUS)
活動名稱:World Model United Nation（WMUN）
研習類別:參加國際社團大學
I am Grace En-Tien Chang and I’m a student of Biology at Kaohsiung Medical University. I’m also the founding president of the Kaohsiung Medical University Model United Nations Club (KMUN for short) and head delegate for our club’s ventures to Harvard World Model United Nations (WMUN) in 2010 and 2011.
World MUN in 2010 was held in Taipei. In 2011, it was held in Singapore, from March 14~March 18. World MUN was dreamed up by students from Harvard University two decades ago, and is always more challenging than the domestic MUN events held in Taiwan. This is because it’s held in a different city around the world each year, with student from hundreds of universities and over 50 countries flocking to attend the event. Many of the university students attending are from departments related to politics, law, economics and business, but registration is not limited only to those who study the humanities.
As a delegation from Kaohsiung Medical University, it was more of a challenge for us to train with very little background in International Relations. However, I believe that in order to become a steward of our planet, it is crucial that we do not shut ourselves away from opportunities to understand our world better. Prior to WMUN, our club held classes in Understanding the United Nations, Rules of Procedure, Speech and Researching your topic. When we learnt that we were to represent Tunisia and Burkina Faso in this event, we quickly got to work to understand our countries and our country’s positions on our topics.
This year my partner Michal and I represented Tunisia in DISEC. It was very different from last year as a single delegate, for the committee is much larger and it is much harder for one to be heard within the committee. For larger committees, a great deal of the real negotiations are thus conducted outside the conference room, in smaller working groups.
In the beginning, I felt it was hard for me to participate because the amount of countries seeking to give speeches made it easy for Tunisia to be overlooked. We first had to choose between two topics. One concerning the conflicts surrounding Kosovo’s independence, and the other concerning the relations between drug trafficking and terrorism.
For many of the MUNs, usually regional blocs are formed as a matter of course due to the shared interests that different countries within a region will have. As Tunisia, we have a choice between the Arab League, the African Union and the European Union, to which we have close commercial ties. I finally decided to focus on the out-of-room negotiations while Michal sat in as official spokesperson for Tunisia within the conference room. First I read each bloc’s proposal’s, and then chose the one which I found most reasonable to participate in. It was towards that bloc (the African Union and Latin America) that I contributed my ideas towards. And seeing that they already had two or three people working on the text (typing on laptops), decided to help in negotiating a potential merger with the European Union and the Arab League. The idea is to hopefully come to a greater consensus on one copy of the draft resolution so that DISEC as a body can successfully pass a resolution by the end of the meeting.
One of the things I realized during this exchange was that, yes, it was smart of me to bring a light laptop, but it would be even smarter for me to bring a USB so that we could transfer files more easily, as no internet was allowed within the venue. I also discovered that it’s very useful to wear high heels - it allows you to peer over other people’s shoulder’s more effectively when everyone is reading the same document.
Though for the first two days of the conference I was not actively negotiating outside with everyone else, I found that when I did try to get involved, I was included more quickly because I tried to be helpful. When the African Union was short on someone to negotiate the merger (which turned out to represent few of the country’s desire rather than a general consensus of the African Union), I volunteered to keep an eye on what the EU/AL bloc was doing and serve as a contact person for our bloc. When a few delegates were concerned that the Working Paper of the AU/LA bloc might be objectionable for their countries, I asked them to look over the working paper and list the clauses that they might find objectionable so we could work that into an amendment. I chose to be pragmatic instead of emotional when members in our bloc forgot to include our amendment, and to be willing to drop it when committee time proved short. And most importantly of all, I made it a priority to credit people for their contributions.
I also learned a lot from the other delegates. Many delegates used graphic descriptions to make their speeches more memorable. And it was mesmerizing to watch how one of the delegates skillfully deflected the suspicion and anger from several countries of the African Union concerning a potential merger with another bloc.
It is also very interesting to observe how it takes a great deal of preparation and negotiation in order to formulate resolutions that can reflect the views of most of the countries present. And helped me understand why it is difficult for the Climate Change negotiations to quickly reach the sort of consensus that many environmental groups are calling for.
Without real resources and a real governmental body to reinforce certain positions, delegates of MUN are frequently called upon to design creative solutions to real world problems based on what they know of a country’s position and the international environment. Due to this, MUN has been sometimes critiqued as a educational propagation of the existing fallacies of an old system, by people who believe that the UN is too inefficient and patriarchal to pursue the true justice and peace that is called for in the UN Charter.
A recent Newsweek article mentioned the fact that an apathetic moderate voting population weakens the function of democracy and allows more extreme viewpoints to gain ground. A large percentage of the moderate population in the United States feel unwilling to engage in the daunting task of understanding the political system within their country, and thus they feel alienated from the system and are less willing to participate. Without a moderate voice from the populace, groups that are more aggressive in voicing more extreme viewpoints have a disproportionate sway over the direction of the country.
I personally believe that a better system cannot be designed without first understanding how the existing system works. It is through our participation that we gain skills in understanding how decisions are made, on our behalf, in the international arena. It is also through our participation that we gain an interest in the affairs of our world, and take the first step towards becoming a conscious civic citizen of our planet earth. The participation of youth in UN process will help us move towards monitoring and influencing a better UN system.
Model United Nations doesn’t reflect the real United Nations in that the personal charisma, diplomatic skills and knowledge of a delegate matters much more than the resources that a country has in reality. In this way the Model United Nations reflects more of an ideal of the egalitarian ‘one-country-one-vote’ nature of the United Nations. This fact allows us more room to explore the possibilities in international policies, and to develop our ability to organize, connect, and persuade. It is also a place where lasting friendships are made - across nations and ethnic groups - and forges a stronger sense of the community and purpose that we as human beings on this planet must have in order to face the challenges of this century.
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