OYIS’s First MUN Conference

Model United Nations (MUN) is an extracurricular activity that debuted in OYIS this year with chemistry teacher Mr. Joy as organizer and supervisor. It is a club wherein student members can learn more about the United Nations and the work that they do, as well as educate themselves about world issues such as fast fashion and black market arms trades.

February 23 and 24, or last Thursday and Friday, marked the first MUN conference to be attended by the OYIS MUN club. The members, who ranged from students in grades 9 through 11, traveled to the Sannomiya Convention Center in Kobe, where they spent the next two days with other MUN clubs from schools all over Japan: Senri & Osaka International Schools, Seisen International School, Hokkaido International School, Doshisha International Academy, Canadian Academy, and Marist Brothers International School, who hosted the event.

Preparation

This conference was held as a reunion, in a way, after three years of inactivity due to the pandemic. It was the 36th anniversary of the Marist MUN Conference, and Marist’s MUN head guy said that he was “very happy” with the conference and the opportunity to hold it.

Club members had to prepare a research paper on a chosen topic in accordance with a given country prior to the conference. The topics provided by Marist were as follows: Fast Fashion, Factory Farming, Militarization of Space, and Young Caregivers.

After receiving a topic and country, the students did research on background information regarding their assigned country as well as their topic. They wrote a position paper that stated the issue’s importance, any previous action that had been taken, their designated country’s stance, and a call to action. Based on this paper, the students then wrote a short opening speech (maximum 100 seconds) that they would later present at the conference to the other delegates. “Delegate” here is a term used to describe an MUN club member at a conference who represents a country other than their country of origin and debates all issues from this country’s perspective, temporarily disregarding their own personal views.

The conference

Day 1

On the first day of the conference, all of the student attendees split up into their Topical Committees to create, discuss, and finalize resolution papers on the topics they’d chosen prior to the conference. Resolution papers are essentially explanations of different actions that an assembly wants the UN (or MUN, in this case) to agree on and begin implementing in each Member State. Afterward, they met with the General Assembly to eliminate one of these resolutions, as there was not enough time to go through all four, and ended up eliminating the resolution on Fast Fashion after listening to each of the speeches. “General Assembly” refers to all of the attending delegates, and their collective discussions and tasks. The General Assembly then debated the resolution on Factory Farming, and in the end, voted against passing it.

At one point, the Security Council, made up of fifteen permanent Member States, retreated to another room to discuss an “Emergency Crisis” that turned out to be a situation between India and Pakistan.

Attendees started this day at 9:00 and ended it at 20:30—definitely a jampacked schedule.

A peek into what the conference looked like. Students & teacher unnamed; not affiliated with OYIS.

Day 2

The Security Council continued to work on their own topic and its resolution on the second day while the General Assembly debated the resolutions on Militarization of Space and Young Caregivers, neither of which they ended up passing.

Everyone congregated at the end of the conference to discuss the Security Council’s resolution, which they passed. There was an awards ceremony as well, with nine "honorable delegate" awards for those within the General Assembly and two within the Security Council. Both the General Assembly and Security Council additionally had “best delegate” awards.

Things started on this day at the same time as the previous day but concluded at 17:00.

Our students

The students from OYIS that attended were Miela (grade 9, delegate of Maldives), Chloe (grade 9, delegate of Sierra Leone), Kiely (grade 9, delegate of Canada), Isaac (grade 10, delegate of Yemen), Shreenidhy (grade 10, delegate of Mexico; Security Council) and Anju (grade 11, delegate of Thailand).

Anju won one of the “best delegate” awards, and Miela says she is “so happy for [her]” as “she did very well on her Young Caregivers speech.”

The OYIS club members take a break between delegate duties.

Anju described the conference as “relatively laid-back,” and commented on how many of the other students appeared to be beginners to MUN like the OYIS club members. However, she says, “Some delegates were very prepared and practiced, and I really admired how they could just improvise the most organized, synthesized speeches on the spot.”

She continues, “It was a really interesting experience that I'm so glad I did and would definitely do again.” It seems the rest of the students, as well as the teachers that accompanied them for supervision, were happy with how the conference turned out, too.

“I'd definitely recommend anyone to join it next year,” Anju says, “even if they think they're not ‘into debate’.”