OxIMUN
It has been a crazy weekend, with our very own Oxford Model United Nations conference taking place. Over 300 delegates from all around Europe and the United Kingdom, including some as far away as the United States, came to attend this conference. As the director of the Crisis Committee, I had to run a simulated crisis, along with the Security Council as we were doing a joint crisis scenario for the first time at this conference. All in all, it was a wonderfully satisfying experience and renewed the joy I have of doing MUN.
The Crisis scenario was great fun and very topical indeed being about a nuclear Iran. The Crisis committee was supposedly a special council called together by the Grand Ayatollah Ali Khomeini to look into how to respond to the UN over the Iranian nuclear program and this allowed us to choose a mix of delegates from different ideological perspectives, ensuring that reaching a conscensus would be difficult. Things were escalated by the fact that the Iranian Uranium Enrichment had gone ahead further than expected and that I suggested a version of the Shahab missile had been tested and was operational. It was great fun from the get go and got more interesting after the Defense Minister declared that Iran had nuclear weapons and the Israel delegate on the Security Council threatened to use unilateral force if the issue was not settled quickly.
More fun was had when I released my report of a Israeli national being captured near an Iranian nuclear facilitywhich of course prompted anti-US and anti-Israeli riots throuhout the country. The committee then finally managed to come up with a statement disavowing that Iran had a nuclear program or was seeking nuclear weapons and presented it to the Security Council, only for a nuclear scientist to defect and reveal the program to the Security Council just a couple of minutes afterward. Unsurprisingly the SC was not impressed.
In a sense though, I am quite relieved it is all over, and that by all accounts, the delegates found the scenario to be quite a success. The usual procrastination, a lack of contact from the Security Council and the fact that the scenario was developing rapidly in real life meant that during the vacation nothing had got off the road at all, and even after returning to Oxford progress had been markedly slow. About a week and a half before the conference, we finally hammered out a scenario, did up the profiles and got things together, only just. It was definitely crazy planning everything - between Thursday night and Sunday night I averaged about 3 hours sleep each evening. Thursday night was spent printing out placards and doing up delegate packs, Friday night at the social and then doing up last minute preperations and research. Saturday was another MUN social followed by further crisis planning and Sunday was the after party at Oriel and another late evening due to the fact that I had to walk all the way to Catz to pick up my bike keys which had been leant to Natascha, and then walk to St John's to get my bike before cycling back.
The Crisis scenario was great fun and very topical indeed being about a nuclear Iran. The Crisis committee was supposedly a special council called together by the Grand Ayatollah Ali Khomeini to look into how to respond to the UN over the Iranian nuclear program and this allowed us to choose a mix of delegates from different ideological perspectives, ensuring that reaching a conscensus would be difficult. Things were escalated by the fact that the Iranian Uranium Enrichment had gone ahead further than expected and that I suggested a version of the Shahab missile had been tested and was operational. It was great fun from the get go and got more interesting after the Defense Minister declared that Iran had nuclear weapons and the Israel delegate on the Security Council threatened to use unilateral force if the issue was not settled quickly.
More fun was had when I released my report of a Israeli national being captured near an Iranian nuclear facilitywhich of course prompted anti-US and anti-Israeli riots throuhout the country. The committee then finally managed to come up with a statement disavowing that Iran had a nuclear program or was seeking nuclear weapons and presented it to the Security Council, only for a nuclear scientist to defect and reveal the program to the Security Council just a couple of minutes afterward. Unsurprisingly the SC was not impressed.
In a sense though, I am quite relieved it is all over, and that by all accounts, the delegates found the scenario to be quite a success. The usual procrastination, a lack of contact from the Security Council and the fact that the scenario was developing rapidly in real life meant that during the vacation nothing had got off the road at all, and even after returning to Oxford progress had been markedly slow. About a week and a half before the conference, we finally hammered out a scenario, did up the profiles and got things together, only just. It was definitely crazy planning everything - between Thursday night and Sunday night I averaged about 3 hours sleep each evening. Thursday night was spent printing out placards and doing up delegate packs, Friday night at the social and then doing up last minute preperations and research. Saturday was another MUN social followed by further crisis planning and Sunday was the after party at Oriel and another late evening due to the fact that I had to walk all the way to Catz to pick up my bike keys which had been leant to Natascha, and then walk to St John's to get my bike before cycling back.
posted by Caleb Liu | 6:09 PM
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