Haileybury MUN Conference 2022
Last weekend was another success for our students and for Royal Russell at the Haileybury MUN Conference 2022. Twelve delegates across five different committees (Special Political, Environment and Ecology, Disarmament and International Security, Economic and Social and Human Rights) represented Congo, Cuba and Cyprus. Charlotte Mawer and Katie Hamerton were Guest Chairs in the Disarmament Committee and Special Committee on Youth and Health respectively and were a credit to the school for their professionalism. In true Royal Russell style, we came back with a few awards. Congratulations to the following students:
Luke McCabe: Award for Distinguished Delegate in the Special Political Committee, representing Cuba
Anastacia Allan: Award for Distinguished Delegate in The Economic and Social Committee, representing Congo
CJ Coleman Benjamin: Award for Highly Commended Delegate in the Economic and Social Committee, representing Cuba
Urusharman Hemanth: Award for Highly Commended Delegate in the Disarmament and International Security Committee, representing Congo
Well done to all participants!
Last weekend, eight Royal Russell students attended the Haberdasher’s Boys MUN Conference, representing Australia and The United Arab Emirates. Our students had the opportunity to debate on topics such as the Question of returning cultural artefacts, the Question of preparing for future pandemic, the Question of the Security Council reform or the Question of literacy rates in sub-Saharan Africa. This was an enjoyable event for all, experienced and first time delegates. Congratulations to Anastacia Allan who received the award for Best Delegate, representing the UAE in the Health Committee.
We have had an amazing conference, after a year or more of Covid restrictions and cancellations, we were able to again run our in-person conference. 25 schools attended, some new schools, who will be back next year, having expressed the most wonderful experience for their students. Well done to our fantastic Officers and teams for making everyone so welcome at one of the first in-person conferences to run safely since THIMUN 2019! See you all next year!!
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!
All films can be seen by following the links below:
You can follow us on Twitter @RoyalRussellMUN
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FB: rrsimun
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.
