From the 13th to the 17th of November, I participated
in the Iberian Model United Nations conference, which was held in Lisbon (Portugal),
and during which I was representing the delegation of Spain in the special
conference. I had been looking forward to the trip for a long time and I was
overjoyed by the fact that this experience exceeded my expectations. It was my
first time in Portugal and the beauty of the country as well as its culture
fascinated me.
IMUN originated
from a long tradition of preparatory debates for The Hague International Model
United Nations (THIMUN) between the Carlucci American International School of
Lisbon and the American School of Madrid, meeting "halfway" in
Merida, Spain. IMUN now stands on its own, in affiliation with THIMUN. The IMUN
conferences are now held at here at CAISL and Centro Cultural de Belém (CCB), Lisbon, Portugal.
"Out-of-Lisbon" students may stay at specially priced rooms at the Estoril Eden Hotel.
We arrived at
the Estoril Eden hotel on Wednesday, where we met a few of the other schools
also participating in the conference. We met all the remaining delegates on
Thursday, while lobbying from 1pm to 5pm at CAISL. Our teacher assigned us the
task to initiate and maintain conversation with at least twenty
people in order to get other delegates’
support on our resolutions. During
this, I met several delegates from the Special conference who were all
interested in debating the issue concerning access to clean water and
sanitization. I had chosen this topic in light of the recent flood, which Spain
faced before the conference. Together with 10 other delegates from all around
the world, I read all of the individual resolutions on the issue and we then
started the process of merging them. We also formed a Facebook group where we
added all the co-submitters, who where from various countries, ranging from
Italy to the United States. I felt we had a pretty strong resolution by the
end, which fully explored most of the fundamental aspects of the global problem
in question. The same night after having submitted our resolution, we were
ecstatic when we read online that it was selected as one of the resolutions
that were going to be debated.
Afterwards we debated
all day Friday and Saturday at CCB in plenary session. Considerable preparation
was necessary on our part in order to fully benefit of IMUN. As delegates,
we had the responsibility to appropriately represent the policies, attitudes,
and outlook of our respective assigned countries. To facilitate this, I
had to extensively research Spain well in advance of the conference. IMUN had
distributed country assignments in May to facilitate and encourage accurate
representation. We also had to be well aware of the major current event
issues of the day.
The Special Conference Assembly addressed issues such as
ensuring equal rights for persons with disabilities, promoting universal assess
to clean water and sanitation, and developing plans to ensure stability in the
aftermath of conflict and disasters, amongst other topics. The conference began
with opening speeches and followed with the debates on the selected
resolutions. As we moved into the debate on our resolution on the second day, Rachel,
our principle representation, got up and gave a short, but efficient speech on
what realistic goals our resolution set out to accomplish. After a long debate,
our resolution was voted to pass by the majority of the delegates of the special
conference.
This was a great conference as all ISK resolutions were passed.
IMUN made me a aware of the importance of preparation in order to succeed. From
preparing I gained a greater understanding of these relevant and important
global issues, which certainly added to my knowledge of the world around me. Adding
to the conference, we also had the chance to visit Portugal and learn about
some of the cultural norms and dishes. This was a great ending to my three-year
long MUN career. Through MUN, I gained diplomatic skills, which always prove to
be useful in any given situation!
