London International Model United Nations Conference 2003

February 21 - 23 2003, London School of Economics

Committee: Political and Decolonisation Committee
By Jonny Hornig

I was head delegate. This entailed a fair amount of responsibility. I compiled a political agenda prior to the conference. This took the form of a list of bullet points outlining Canada’s policies relating to the issues being discussed. I visited the Canadian Embassy in London to obtain some paraphernalia, including Canadian pin badges, Canadian paper flags, letter headed paper and a large map of Canada! The delegation found uses for all these items, except the map! It was fun playing the part. At the opening ceremony I made a short speech outlining the ideals fundamental to Canada’s foreign policy.
I sat on the Political and Decolonisation Committee. The Question of Kashmir and the Question of the international Peacekeeping were discussed. My research prior to the conference was very beneficial. I learnt a great deal about both issues. I prepared a resolution on Kashmir. It was definitely worth putting in the effort to do this, as it allowed me to get more involved with proceedings. I had to lobby for support of my resolution. This proved successful. I even decided to merge my resolution with that of the Pakistani delegate. The chair of the committee allowed the resolution to be debated. However, it was tabled prematurely: Another delegate had lobbied even more successfully and had the support of the majority to debate his resolution over ours! Negotiation and personal politics was certainly an aspect of the weekend.
The Political Committee heard Martin Crago, Head of International Intelligence at the National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS) speak on the question of international organised crime. His speech was informative and enjoyable. I learnt among other things that Pablo Escabar had become so rich as a Columbian drugs lord that he had offered to single-handedly pay off Columbia’s national debt to avoid arrest!
Debate was very stimulating and fun. It was a great opportunity to learn about the attitudes of international governments and indeed other students. Everyone played their part. The boat party was fantastic also, and friendships were struck up surprisingly quickly.


Committee: Economic and Social Committee
By Frank Hammerschmidt

London is naturally a perfect place for a MUN conference. Just like MUN it is very diverse and home to a variety of opinions. As I arrived there early on Friday in the afternoon, I had a lot of time to do lobbying after I had registered everyone. For ECOSOC, there were a few resolutions on each topic and so we decided to merge some of them to make them more powerful. Thus, my own resolution on the first topic of the "Promotion of sustainable development, with special reference to energy", was merged with a resolution proposed by Germany. I further decided to co-submit a resolution on the "Elimination of the use of coercive economic measures as a means of political and economic compulsion" that was drafted by Israel. The General Assembly that took place after the initial lobbying time was very interesting with many good and/or funny opening speeches made by the heads of delegation from every country. This was followed by an opening address of Lord Hannay of Chiswick, the opening speaker and a former permanent representative of the UK at the UN in New York.
On Saturday morning the ECOSOC committee sessions began with the debate on the "Promotion of sustainable development, with special reference to energy". Our resolution (Germany's and Canada's) was tabled in favor of another after one hour of debate time. However, we succeeded in getting the majority of countries to vote against this resolution submitted by the UK and finally passed our resolution. The debate on the "Elimination of the use of coercive economic measures as a means of political and economic compulsion" was very interesting, especially because of differences between Israel and Syria on this topic that took up most of the speaking time. In the end a resolution submitted by Colombia and Saudi Arabia was passed with a close vote. After this long Saturday the boat party on the Thames in the evening was a good reward. Everybody enjoyed this very much (as far as we could remember on Sunday).
The debate on Sunday morning went astonishingly well and another resolution on the worldwide "Shortage of Teachers" was passed after a short debate. This left us with enough time to go on to another topic that was not originally planned: "Access to water in the Middle-East". Mainly Syria, Israel and Saudi Arabia showed interest in this issue, but due to the short and exclusive nature of the resolution presented by Saudi Arabia no agreement could be reached until lunch. In the General Assembly in the afternoon, only the ECOSOC resolution on sanctions was discussed due to time constraints unfortunately. An amazing anti-war rap performed by the representative of the "Kingdom of Thailand" was the last climax of the conference.
As this was my second MUN conference in the year, it was great to see many people again that I had already met at CUIMUN in Cambridge in November. Comparing the two conferences I can say that LIMUN 2003 was the bigger conference and was more fun, probably so because we were a team of six people from Bristol this time instead of only three in Cambridge. However, since CUIMUN 2002 was a more serious and professional conference in my opinion, the level of debate was higher there and the discussions were more interesting.


Committee: Social, Cultural and Humanitarian Committee
By Mark Rosin

This committee deals with major humanitarian issues, and during this conference issues pertaining to racism, specifically directed at ethnic groups and tourism were discussed.
The committee's resolutions lacked any real bite. The issues are of a nature that all states will publicly agree that racism needs to be abolished. To change racist attitudes at grass root levels is a difficult process that can only really be implemented by sweeping reforms, the nature of which few governments are able to agree on.
Hence the passed resolution contained few clauses that would really effect those that were meant to be helped by it, the majority of it being made up of good will clauses, e.g. "Urging member states to condemn racist attitudes"
Equally with tourism, whilst most countries agreed it was a good thing because it brings in foreign currency, many countries were not prepared to pass laws giving rights to tourists that could contravene national security and hence things remained much as they are.
My personal advice would be to avoid this committee in future, it might be appropriate for a beginner who just wanted to observe procedure without getting caught up in any serious debate. Although even in that case, I would advise sitting on a more interesting committee that dealt with more pressing issues.
If however the only opportunity to go to a conference is by sitting on this committee it is still worth attending. The level of debate in the General Assembly is high and resolutions passed by other committees are debated.
The standard of debate is mixed, some excellent knowledgeable delegates and other less experienced delegates took the floor. Whilst there was some deviation from the form that the U.N. takes there was good will and high spirits throughout with delegates willing and keen to participate.

THE CONFERENCE ORGANIZATION AND ENTERTAINMENT
The conference was superbly run, the venue was very fitting and contributed to the feel that this was an important event for a lot of people. A lot of hard work clearly went into setting up speakers and time tabling.
Each committee had a expert speaker on the issues dealt with in their committee, unfortunately our speaker was unavoidably detained and resultantly we had extra debate time.
The conference provided superb entertainment on the Saturday night, a boat party on the river Thames. It was well attended and people socialized well. There was a range of nationalities and ages, I certainly enjoyed myself. Jonny and I made good friends with 'Juan' (spl?)!! Big it up Juan!
Overall a good experience that I will endeavor to repeat again. It is really only at the conferences where one can see what the purpose of the smaller meetings really is.
I also wish to thank, Nisha, Jonny and Natasha for their effort in organizing the delegation.


Committee: Special Conference for the Development of Africa
by Bansi Malde

The topics being discussed were:
1. The question of equal treatment for all of HIV/AIDS
2. The question of achieving education for all as a development goal
3. The question of the link between conflict diamonds and civil war in African Nations.

The first day started off with lobbying for support for various resolutions. I, did not have a resolution, but made positive contributions to a couple of resolutions and co-submitted them. Following the opening statements by each state, we had the keynote speaker.
On Saturday, we broke off into our various committee rooms and debated resolutions on the above questions. First up was HIV/AIDS, which was a very interesting debate. We had plenty of amendments and a good lively debate. At noon, we had a speaker, Mukta Sharma, from UNAIDS who talked to us about the scale of the problem, the problems faced in preventing the spread and problems faced in getting anti retroviral drugs to those who desperately need them. We finally passed a resolution, sometime after lunch. We then moved to the next topic. There were 2 resolutions, which were later merged. The debate on education was also very good. At 5:30, the session for the day ended. We all met later for a boat party on the Thames. That was really good fun. I met people from Germany and Mexico who had come to UK for LIMUN.
On Sunday, we met at the LSE at 10 a.m. (which was really early) and continued my committee session till one. We passed 2 resolutions, which were all heavily amended. After lunch, we joined the General Assembly, where the resolution on HIV/AIDS was discussed and passed. We then debated the ECOSOC resolution, after which we had the closing speeches and a surprise rap session by one of the delegates. All in all, I had a really good time, made loads of new friends and discussed lots of interesting issues.
For anyone thinking of going for a conference in the future, you might want to take along a resolution to be debated. Also, make sure you do a lot of research regarding your country and make alliances with your allies when you get there.

This site is maintained by Frank Hammerschmidt