Wellington Year 12 pupils attending the MODEL UNITED NATIONS

Since August, a number of our Senior School pupils have taken part in a number of Model United Nations (MUN) conferences in Shanghai. An MUN conference requires pupils to act as delegates to a specialist UN committee, which will discuss topical issues, formally debate current global political hot topics and come up with practical solutions.

Before a conference, pupils are given a country to represent, a specialist committee to attend and a set of issues to discuss.  With the support of Mr. Macrow – MUN Director for Wellington, the pupils therefore need to spend time in school researching their country position on the topics they have been given. At the conference, debate centres around resolutions that are agreed by interested delegates and then presented by a group of delegates as a joint submission. At the heart of each resolution is a set of practical requests for governments or NGOs or other interested organisations to adopt to solve the problem they are discussing. Resolutions are debated and then voted on clause by clause in order to achieve a consensus on the issue which can be agreed by all delegates.

For Elisa (Year 12 IB Scholar), “MUN has really allowed me to gain perspective. Taking on the role of a delegate from a country different from my own has required me to embody that country’s political, social and sometimes even religious views, depending on which committee, making me more understanding of other cultures and ways of thinking.” 

The MUN conferences give students the opportunity to research issues of global importance, learn how international organisations operate in practice, learn how to write a technical resolution and then debate and defend their ideas in a very technical format. It gives each pupil a new perspective and increases knowledge of the world they may not have discovered otherwise. For these reasons it is very highly regarded by the IBO which organizes the IB examinations.

After one of the conferences, Shirley (Year 12 IB Scholar) said that MUN has taught her how to become truly international-minded. It also taught her how to stand, speak, deal with others, delegate, deliberate, lead, and so many other talents she would never have learned from engaging in other activities.