At a time when the effectiveness of the United Nations is in dispute, the ideals of the international organization still inspire many-especially poli-sci majors.
On March 27, a group of U of T students will get to participate in the real thing. Almost.
A team of ten delegates will represent U of T at the World Model United Nations (WorldMUN) conference in Beijing. More than 1,400 students from 50 countries are expected to take part in the event, which is organized annually by Harvard University.
The ten students from U of T are all members of the United Nations Society, a group that promotes and discusses the UN and its aims of internationalism. The UN Society sends its members to model UN conferences around the world.
The journey to the conference has been a difficult one. The university did not fund the trip, leaving the students to fund it themselves. In fact, Lindsay Doyle, the head delegate, said the team has received more support from Harvard than its own school.
The purpose of the WorldMUN conference is to draft and pass resolutions on issues of international concern as a single body, mimicking the workings of the real General Assembly of the UN.
Doyle describes the conference as an “excellent learning experience.” She and her team hope to win best delegate awards for the university and Doyle says she is “very proud to be bringing a third” of the 31 delegates from Canada.
Each delegation is assigned one or more countries to represent, and members of the U of T team are representing the United Kingdom, Nicaragua, and Guinea-Bissau. Their task is to become fully versed in the foreign policy of their assigned country so that they can represent it as closely as possible at the conference.
The conference is highly competitive and there is no shortage of awards up for grabs. Her U of T team has some inexperienced members, but Doyle is very optimistic of the abilities of the team as a whole.
“The likelihood [of winning awards] is very strong,” she said.
Debating and diplomacy are crucial skills at the conference, but the team is diverse and interdisciplinary in its background, reflecting the divergent issues that they will face. In addition to international relations and political science, the expected staple fields of the UN Society, there are also students studying commerce, engineering, and Slavic languages.
The UN Society is already hoping for more members and more international conferences to come. “It is an excellent opportunity, one that we hope to open up to more students throughout the next academic year,” Doyle said.
