Yesterday I went to Munga - or in other words, Model United Nations General Assembly.
What this means is that lots of schools pick countries to represent in teams of three, and go to the assembly (held in Kidlington) as that country, and debate topical issues from their point of view.
I represented Angola with my friends Heidi and Rachel, and I really enjoyed myself! I was quite scared before the day began, because I had to speak in front of quite a lot of people and I wasn't sure if I had enough information, but it turned out that I had more than enough.
The first debate - plenary or whatever it's called! - was held with everyone together, but only one spokesperson from each country, so Rachel represented us. The debate was over climate change and global warming, and although interesting this wasn't the best part of the day because, since all countries had been told to write a statement for their viewpoint on climate change, most people simply read out their statements and we didn't get very far really.
For the second part, we split into 3 different debates - Malaria and HIV/AIDs, Fair Trade and Landmines. I was in the landmines debate. This was the part that had really shocked me actually, because before agreeing to do this I didn't even know where Angola was, and it is a country in need of desperate help. Up to 20 million landmines are suspected to be under the soil, but they were not marked so nobody knows where. A 28 year civil war finished in 2002, and therefore the country is still unstable. 150-200 new landmine casualties occur every week, and half of these are children. As you can see, I had a lot to talk about. It really is appalling that no one will give sufficient aid to countries like Angola. It is true that the government is corrupt, but this is not the fault of the people and they are the ones dying from starvation and explosions.
Henry Box submitted two teams this year, Angola and Iraq. The landmine debate was very amusing, because my friend Chris, who represented Iraq, had not been able to find out anything about Iraq's stance on landmines. He therefore decided to be as controversial as possible, and it was hilarious because many countries' contributions started with, "In reply to Iraq's statement," or "I must argue with Iraq" and so on. I think he enjoyed himself quite a lot.
For lunch, we had been told there was lunch provided but actually there wasn't. Luckily we could walk easily into Kidlington, where we found a nice little café and had tea and sandwiches! We felt very proper and English :)
In the afternoon we had an emergency debate, with a situation they'd concocted for us, which was quite fun because we had to network round all the different countries and try and gain allies, so that when we voted we would be in the majority. Unfortunately, we weren't!
We then had to vote on resolutions we had drawn up in our separate debates, which was all fun enough, and that was the end!
It was very enjoyable, and it certainly made me think about issues I might not usually think about from all ends of the spectrum. I think I can probably comment more knowledgably about UN procedures now as well!
