MUNs are a great opportunity to display your public speaking skills, build up confidence and problem-solving skills. I hadn’t attended any MUNs since 2019 so I wanted to take up this opportunity to participate in FSMUN 8.0 as a delegate, meet new people, network, and discuss significant global issues.
LO 5:-
Working with people in a personal or informal situation is difficult for me, opening up to others about myself or talking about me, makes me feel like a self-absorbed or self-centred person which is just not who I am. Whereas in a formal situation I am able to display my different skill set to be beneficial to others as well as myself. Hence working collaboratively was easy for me in this situation, as well as I formed my own block, created alliances in this MUN. I didn’t specifically meet anyone or interact with anyone difficult but MUN can get very competitive at times so I had to make sure I did what is best for me but also took balanced decisions that didn’t harm any other delegates, or made them feel that working with me was a bad notion.MUN is all about displaying your skills, especially communication and leadership skills because without them problem-solving wouldn’t be done efficiently. While forming draft resolutions or working papers, delegates need to be in blocks, there are 2-3 authors who basically lead the block, give direction and use their skill sets hence working collaboratively is a necessity. Since MUN is about how you represent yourselves and your profile, showing leadership and teamwork got me a high commendation certificate, which is very valuable making teamwork and leadership skills very important in MUN events.
LO 6:-
Issues discussed in our committee were related to demilitarization in the Middle East and North Africa region, few of the sub-topics that lead the discussion were the role of non-state actors in the MENA region, western intervention in the MENA region, and solutions. These topics are very important globally as they hamper or disturb peace in the MENA region, talking about these important global issues, finding solutions to these problems is very crucial for world peace. Knowing these global issues makes you more aware of the situations going around in the world and as being part of the young generation we have the rights, the power, and ability to create change, spread awareness, and change the world, it reminds me of the responsibility I have as being part of the youth community. My work in my CAS activity makes me feel obliged and responsible for giving me a responsibility to help create peace and change in the world and I tried, did my part.
LO 7:-
There were few ethical issues in this activity since in MUN you are assigned a specific country or profile you have to act according to its foreign policies, alliances, and the country or profile’s stand on the agenda being discussed in the committee. Now many times even if your ethics and values are against the assigned profile you still have to go according to your profile’s stand, policies and etc as you will be representing that country/profile. For example, in this MUN I was assigned the country Israel, so even if I believed and agreed to what the delegate of Iran or Iraq said I could not appreciate, support or agree with that point because that goes against my foreign policies. But these ethical issues didn’t affect me directly it just gave me a different perspective to look at situations. Manier times I felt that I was doing something wrong while supporting or encouraging incorrect and unethical solutions just because I was allied to that country or that my foreign policy was based on. Before the activity, I felt supporting what country or policies was okay, not right, not wrong just okay. During the activity, I felt that it was unfair to ourselves and after the activity, I realised that despite what others think as my own individual I should be allowed to make my own choices based on my ethics and principles and not because of what my peers, family or friends think and believe in.
To conclude, MUN contributed to developing my speaking skills, research skills and helped me build my confidence. Along with that I also developed learner profile knowledge while exploring issues that have local and global significance.
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