Our students have now returned from a very successful trip to the 52nd annual Hague Model United Nations’ conference. Over 3,000 students from around the world had gathered in The Hague for the conference including just four schools from the UK. Our students, representing Georgia, all enjoyed the week and did really well. Everyone set themselves different targets at the beginning of the week and it was great to see them reach them. Some of our students, unused to speaking in public, did amazingly to stand up in committees of over 150 delegates to ask questions, make amendments and take the floor. Other more extrovert students like Betsy and Simon made real impacts in their committees with their amendments and other speeches. And perhaps the two most active delegates, Izzy and Sam, worked well collaboratively in their committees and took the floor many times during the week. Sam did brilliantly to main submit his resolution and to lead the debate in committee. Elsewhere at the conference we had three members of the press team with Ella writing a number of excellent articles, Zoya producing some excellent pictures and Sammie working on lay-out. Dionne was one of the best chairs at the conference and Aaron did a really good job in the ICJ. He was alone in his judgement on the first case but impressed everyone with the logic of his decision. Finally Ella Jones really did the school proud as one of the Deputy Sec Gens (who basically run the conference). She made an emotional but very good speech at the closing ceremonies in front of 2,000!
15 Royal Russell School students attended BMUN XII. This year we represented Sudan, Iraq and China with an excellent mix of experienced and less experienced delegates who all gave position statements in their committees, and managed to either take the floor or ask a point of information. Perhaps our busiest delegate was Sam who managed to get his resolution debated in both his committee and the plenary, getting it passed in both forums. Poppy did a good job in her first time as a Security Council delegate and it was great to see CJ and David taking the floor to speak alongside sixth form students. In the closing ceremonies only a small numbers of delegates were given awards so Betsy, Isabelle (both Highly Commended delegates) and Aaron (Outstanding delegate) did particularly well to win theirs. All their efforts were rewarded when China won a prestigious Highly Commended award.
On Saturday we took eleven students to Croydon High School’s MUN Conference. We had a mix of experienced delegates and relative newcomers, including two who were attending their first conference. Without exception, all got really involved and spoke well in their committees, including Charlotte and Arjun who impressed immensely in their first ever conference, showing that the future of MUN in Royal Russell is looking strong. Amongst the more experienced students, Ella chaired with absolute aplomb in the prestigious Security Council, and both Sam and Simon won awards as Highly Commended Delegates, a wonderful achievement given the range of quality on show at the conference.
All came away having thoroughly enjoyed the day, and are looking forward to their next MUN encounters.
The 38th International RRS MUN Conference is now closed!
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The actual General assembly parts of the conference were live streamed on You Tube:
Opening ceremony and opening speeches:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAbR83Ms4Qw
Monday debates:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_CCEtZeFMA
The Distinguished Delegate Awards went to students representing:
SOCHUM 1: Belgium, Pakistan, Indonesia, France, Canada, Jamaica, Syria, Costa Rica
SOCHUM 2: Sri Lanka, Singapore, Russian Federation, Serbia, Malaysia, Latvia, Indonesia, Republic of Congo
SPECPOL 1: Croatia, Côte d’Ivoire, Yemen, Belgium, Bahrain, Latvia, DR Congo, UK
SPECPOL 2: DR Congo, Belgium, Jordan, Russian Federation, Turkey, Madagascar, Côte d’Ivoire, Slovakia
DISEC 1: Israel, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Myanmar, Syria, UK, Yemen
DISEC 2: Angola, Canada, China, Cambodia, Equatorial Guinea, Kazakhstan, Russian Federation, UK
ENVIRONMENT: Belgium, Côte d’Ivoire, France, Yemen, Serbia, India, Sri Lanka, DR Congo
ECOFIN: Bolivia, Canada, DR Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Croatia, Yemen, Zimbabwe
SPECIAL CONFERENCE ON THE CONSEQUENCES OF BREXIT: UK, Zimbabwe, Iraq, France, Israel, Ethiopia, Bahrain, Estonia
CRISIS: Croatia, Bahrain, Czech Republic, Belgium, UK, Yemen, Indonesia, Jordan
SECURITY COUNCIL:
Côte d’Ivoire, Russian Federation, UK, Indonesia
The Highly Commended Delegation awards went to schools representing:
Côte d’Ivoire: Terenure College, Dublin
Yemen: St Andrew’s College, Dublin
Indonesia: Shrewsbury College
Sri Lanka: Benenden School
Croatia: St Gerard’s School, Dublin
Belgium: Wesley College, Dublin
The Distinguished Delegation awards went to schools representing:
Russian Federation: Habs Boys
France: Santa Margarita Catholic High School, California
United Kingdom: St Andrew’s College, Dublin
The 39th Annual conference will take place between Saturday 17th and Tuesday 20th October 2020 at Royal Russell School. Invitations will be sent by email in early March 2020 to all schools who have previously attended or have requested an invitation. The closing date for applications will be Monday 11th May, after which schools will be advised of their allocated delegation(s), along with successful Chair and ICJ appplicants who will be listed separately on the website.
MiniMUN, the junior debating society which meets every week, continues to go from strength to strength. Over 30 students from Years 6, 7 and 8 attend debates each week to discuss issues which have ranged from questions ranging from “Should Prime Ministers and Presidents be above the law?” to “Should all countries remove the death penalty?” Luke McCabe has proved to be an excellent head of MiniMUN and he chaired the big debate (with Nikita Sood). The debate was held in the Great Hall which was set up for our conference this weekend.
Nine RRS students attended the Reigate Junior MUN conference last Saturday. This is a good training conference which gave our students a great opportunity to learn how to write a resolution and to get practice in debating. All of the students made good policy statements and got involved in debates. James, Lara and Toby wrote a resolution together which was debated and passed in their committees. This conference marks the end of the MiniMUN season which will start again next September with Luke as next year’s head.
This year 7 students attended the 31st Dublin MUN conference. Having spent two months preparing, Megan and Ella finally had the chance to present their case at the ICJ, trying to defend accusations of Australia exploiting Nauru Islanders last century following the destruction of their island through phosphate mining. Ella and Megan did a great job as advocates but ultimately, having tried to support a seemingly morally indefensible argument, they found themselves on the wrong side of the majority judgement. Elsewhere at the conference we were representing Equatorial Guinea. Dionne set the tone with an excellent opening speech in GA whilst Aaron was making his mark in the Security Council. Aaron and Dionne both did an amazing job throughout the conference, both main submitting resolutions in their committees and going on to win Highly Commended Delegate awards. Alistair, Shiraz and Josh have all had much less experience of MUN but they all managed to speak in their committees.
20 Royal Russell students attending the long weekend conference at Haileybury last weekend. This is the largest conference in terms of delegates in the UK – (ours is the oldest and the only 4 day UK conference) – and so a challenging place to go and debate. All of our students spoke and a number excelled in their committees. The three students who won Highly Commended delegate awards were Becky, Alex B and Dionne who all played a really active role in their committees. Two students however won the prestigious Outstanding Delegate awards. Aaron dominated the Security Council taking advantage of his excellent research to produce a series of important amendments and Stevie worked tirelessly in her committee on Syria to bring together the delegates to support important resolutions. This was Stevie’s last MUN conference after five years of amazing service to RRS MUN.
15 RRS students have returned from the Hague after a very successful week at THIMUN. Our ambassador, Stevie, managed to put up a strong showing in the debates on the occupied territories and she main submitted her resolution to her committee on the last day, before waving the Israeli flag in the closing ceremony. Megan acted as 1st yield on her resolution and Sophie was chosen to present the closing arguments for the resolution she had worked on in lobbying. All of our delegates spoke in committee during the week and confidently put forward the views of the Israeli government, as is expected in this role-play. Lucas continued to be busy as President of the Environment Commission chairing many debates whilst Ella, although under-utilised, chaired excellently as always. Ana-Maria meanwhile completed two cases in the ICJ taking the minority side for the judgement of the Qatar v UAE case.
Outside of the debates some of our students also managed to visit both the OPCW and the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia on the final day.
Our 15 students attending the 51st annual Hague Model United Nations conference have made a great start. Lucas and Ella have done really well as chairs. Lucas acting as President of the Environment commissions has been particularly busy. Ana-Maria as a judge on the model ICJ has been working hard and has already almost finished her first case. Stevie, as our ambassador, carried the Israeli flag during the opening ceremonies and went on to make a great opening speech in her committee. Tess and Robbie were also selected to make opening speeches and both did well. Everyone got involved in lobbying with Stevie looking to be main speaker on her resolution and a number of others hoping to be 1st or 2nd yield. By Wednesday everyone had spoken and were busy getting to make friends in their committees. On Wednesday afternoon 9 of the students visited both the ICC and ICJ courts based in the Hague.
On Monday 10th December 17 students from RRS attended Benenden School for their one day MUN conference. All the students did well speaking in their committees and joining in debates. There were over 60 delegations from 20+ schools and although they awarded only 4 individual awards per committee (2 highly commended and 2 outstanding) and just 3 delegation awards we still Managed to pick up 3 individual awards and a Highly Commended Delegation award.
Highly commended Delegate: Ana-Maria Militaru
Outstanding Delegate: Aaron Bigord & Becky Birchall
Highly Commended Delegation: United Arab Emirates (Ana-Maria Militaru, Becky Birchall, Luke McCabe, Justyna Oworuszko & Ella Flaherty
Megan Driver also acted as Head Chair of SPECPOL (one of only 3 visiting chairs) where she chaired as always with real expertise, calmly and fairly.
A team of four Media Students also came to the conference to make two short films – one following a brief set by Benenden and the other a film centred on our students. The students – PhilipStoycheff, Philipp Enikeev, Monika Raykova and Anya Lewis did a great job filming and with the support of Mr Dear they managed to get the first film completed and up on the Benenden website by Tuesday morning. This film can be seen here:
https://www.1853productions.co.uk/benenden-mun/
With the placards and flags we had loaned Benenden filling their GA the Royal Russell presence at the conference was unmissable.
