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College pupils triumph at The United Nations Association of the Isle of Man, Model Security Council

The purpose of the event was to encourage learning about the United Nations and the development of presentation, debating and negotiation skills through bringing the Island’s Sixth Formers together for a simulation of how the members of this UN body try to deal with an international security issue. This year’s topic was the rights and protection of children in armed conflict.  

The president for the Council was William Cain QC, CBE, representing the UK.  He was supported to reach consensus and agree a resolution by UNA colleagues, Phil Craine and Chris Thomas, acting as the UN Secretary General and UN Secretariat.
 
On Friday 30 April, thirty students gathered at King William’s College, the host of this year’s event, to decide the fate of the world. Each delegation had two students representing one of the countries that are now members of the Security Council, the United Nations’ only institution that can directly impose sanctions on all countries. The topic to be discussed concerned the children’s protection in armed conflicts. The most curious phenomenon of the conference was the way each delegate borrowed his country’s behaviour, so that we had USA claiming in the initial speech (already!) how every state should be thankful to the US, this unique, superior, ideal country. China, without doing anything, constituted all countries’ fear because of the potential veto, which could cancel the passing of the resolution. Russia said different information to different delegates, confusing everybody, as it had one internal interest (of avoiding to get the resolution passed) and another external interest (of keeping its image clean), so that it could not use its right of veto and the only solution found was to convince everybody China would use its veto and therefore the meeting should be postponed! France was militating for idealistic goals, the African countries were complaining of how under represented they feel in the UN (although they were 3, almost the same number with which Europe is represented at the Council).  
 
In the end, however, the resolutions passed, as China accidentally forgot to use its veto right. King William’s College was the overall winner of the competition: we had three of our students taking the prizes: the winning team was Uganda, represented by Lea Pollert and Florian Dahm and the best speaker was designated Paula Erizanu, who played the ambassador of France. The other participants we had at the conference, Laura Globig (France), Thomas Fayle and Daniel Smith (Mexico) had also been very active and had an exquisite performance.
 
L6 pupil