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.
The 37th RRSiMUN conference finished on Tuesday 23rd October 2018.
Over 100 Royal Russell students were involved in different activities at this year’s RRSiMUN Conference. The press team produced four really high quality papers: https://www.royalrussellmun.co.uk/the-delegate/
The media team also did an amazing job producing a game show on the Friday night (Hutch V Hutch making a rabbit hutch was a highlight!), a live MUN has got talent, live screening the conference in the Great Hall (which can be seen here https://www.royalrussellmun.co.uk/muntv/) and making a series of videos (seen here: https://www.1853productions.co.uk/muntv/)
Congratulations to the following delegations who won awards:
Highly Commended
Mexico
Bosnia
UK
DPR Korea
Spain
Distinguished Delegation
China
USA
Russian Federation
For the final time before half term the MiniMUNners in Years 6, 7 and 8 met up on Wednesday evening for their weekly debate.
This week they were able to debate in the Great Hall set up ready for our annual conference which starts this weekend. Ably chaired by Abi and Ana-Maria the students were debating whether Prime Ministers, Presidents and Monarchs should have a fixed term or be allowed to rule for life. Argentina was horrified that the British Queen could have been asked to serve for just 10 years but most other students felt that wasn’t a concern for their countries. MiniMUN has now had 6 debates this term ranging from reducing the school leaving age to 14 to banning single use plastic bags.
Seven students from Royal Russell attended the Reigate MUN conference on the same day as our school’s Open Morning. All of the students, representing Germany and the Bahamas, spoke in their committees and enjoyed the day’s debates. Alex was unlucky not to win an award on the Advisory panel on the Iranian Nuclear Program having written, introduced and passed almost half the clauses of the final resolution. Krish won a Highly Commended Award in Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Committee and Aaron – in his first ever conference – won an Outstanding Delegate Award in the Disarmament and International Security Committee, a fantastic achievement.
16 students in Years 7, 8 and 9 attended the Junior MUN conference at Reigate last weekend. This proved to be an excellent starter conference for our pupils with about 140 delegates from 6 schools. The students began the day with workshops on procedure and public speaking which proved helpful for the rest of the day.
All of the students got involved in speaking, lobbying, working with delegates from other schools on a short resolution and a number made excellent amendments in debate. Perhaps the most active were Iris and Lara in Year 7, Terrell, Ethan, CJ and Ollie in Year 8 and Andrew and Luke in Year 9.
Royal Russell students seen here at the Reigate Grammar MUN Conference on Saturday 12th May 2018.
Eight Royal Russell students attended the 30th Dublin MUN conference representing Cuba and providing two advocates to the ICJ. A big highlight was the success of Stevie and Lucas representing the UK, India and Pakistan in the ICJ in a case brought by Marshall Islands. The quality and success of the ICJ hangs on the hard work, preparation and presentation skills of the two pairs of advocates and Stevie and Lucas were faced with a very good pair of advocates from Terenure school and a very impressive group of judges under Mr Stern’s guidance. Stevie and Lucas were brilliant – working really well together and producing an excellent case. They say the ICJ isn’t about winning and losing but 16 of the 20 Judges come down on their side on every count!
Otherwise we had an inexperienced team representing Cuba led by Davlesh, who made an excellent opening speech, spoke on almost every topic and won a Highly Commended award. Ana-Maria also spoke on a number of her own amendments and managed to get her resolution successfully debated in her committee. Saayeethen, Keitaro, Gedi and Jago all spoke in their committees and made friends with other international students.
As always the St Andrews staff and students were incredibly welcoming and our students had a great time capped by our delegation meal complete with Irish folk singers and a number of river dancers.
20 students attended the Haileybury MUN conference in March representing Sweden, North Korea, Haiti and Ghana. With a mainly young and inexperienced team they all did really well. Everybody spoke in their committees making policy statements, asking questions and most took to the floor. Stevie and Yasmin both had their resolutions debated with Stevie’s being one of the few chosen to be debated in GA where it passed. Meera was the voice of reason in the Security Council in her last conference and Antonia did well too, in her last conference. At the closing ceremony Ben Preston, Stevie Palmer, and Ella Flaherty won Highly Commended delegate awards with Dionne Scougul winning a Distinguished Delegate award.
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Royal Russell pupils excelled themselves yet again at Habs Boys MUN conference last weekend, with Lucas Jones, Ben Preston and Ella Jones winning top delegate awards. Ten RRS pupils attended, representing Mongolia and the UK. Megan Driver made key resolution amendments for the UK and Ben had as many as 7 of his amendments passed for Mongolia. It was Yasmin’s first appearance on the Security Council and she both enjoyed her experience and contributed well to the proceedings in this high level committee. It was Mitchell’s second MUN conference and he was desperate to speak! Alex, Chris, Sean and Davlesh all performed really well and we look forward to seeing all of them again at future conferences.
The Royal Russell students have now returned from a very successful THIMUN conference. Our delegates did really well in the committees. Despite there being 3,000 delegates at the conference 6 of our students managed to be main submitter or co-submitter (and 1st yield) on a resolution that they presented in their committee – Pippa, Stevie, Nikita, Megan, Ella and Ben. All of them managed to pass their resolutions – an achievement we haven’t equalled for many years. All of the other students spoke in their committees. Lucas continued chairing in ECOSOC where he did an excellent job – calm, unruffled and professional. On the press team Claudia, Max and Peter were real stars. Claudia produced an amazing selection of art work whilst Peter and Max wrote some very thought provoking articles. Peter interviewed David Williams who has written a book commemorating the first 50 years of THIMUN. Royal Russell is discussed as the first school to affiliate to THIMUN (there are now over 50 worldwide) and the first school which received a delegation from the Hague schools back in 1982. One of the delegates at that conference was the current King of Netherlands then a 16 year-old. He opened the conference this year. The closing ceremony was a more dramatic affair with loud drummers and a flag waving ceremony with our ambassador, Stevie, energetically waving the Ghana flag.
19 Royal Russell students are attending the 50th annual THIMUN conference this week which was opened on Monday by the King of the Netherlands (who, as a student, had attended the Royal Russell MUN conference back in 1982). Our students, representing Ghana, have made a great start to the conference. Alex, Megan, Farrah and Stevie all made excellent opening speeches in their committees and a number of students have managed to be the main submitters or 1st yield on resolutions that have been passed in Approvals. They are all hoping to get their resolution debated later in the week. Lucas has made a great start as a chair of ECOSOC and our three members of the press team, Max, Peter and Claudia, have already contributed to three copies of the conference newspaper with articles and drawings. On Wednesday 12 students visited the International Criminal Court and watched a former child soldier give evidence as part of the trial of Dominic Ongwen a former commander in the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda.
Royal Russell students had a very successful day at the Croydon High MUN conference on Saturday 18th November. Three of our students were asked to guest chair committees at the conference and Pippa, Meera and Ella all did a great job chairing with their usual calm assurance and excellent knowledge of procedure. We took three delegations to the conference representing China, Barbados and Belgium. For most of our delegates this was their first or second conference and they did well, making their policy statements and speaking during debate. The most impressive of the first time delegates was Mitchell who won a Highly Commended delegate award representing China. Also doing well as part of the China delegation were Krish (who also won a Highly Commended delegate award), and Stevie and Ben who were both name checked in the closing ceremony for their excellent contributions in debate. There were seventy delegations from more than thirty schools at the conference so Royal Russell did really well to win one of only four delegation awards, with China being named one of the Highly Commended Delegations.
