MUNA
Friday, 15th September 2023 at 8:45am
Written by Star Jackson (Year 13)
The Model United Nations Assembly (MUNA) was held in Term 2 at Auckland Girls' Grammar School, with the support of Rotary. This was a fantastic opportunity. It was a two day event with more than 90 school teams attending from all around Auckland. Each team represented a country within the United Nations.
Green Bay High School represented Hungary. The team was made up of Year 13 students Vivyan MacClure, Ben Knight, and myself (Star Jackson). We had to choose two of the five remits, as seen below, and write a two-minute speech on each topic.
1) The UN to reaffirm its commitment to advance gender equality within the UN 2) The UN invites member states to comment on the ongoing conflict in the Ukraine and propose solutions to end it. 3) The UN to promote access to fair justice systems in member states. 4) The UN to review policy to ensure the availability and sustainability of water resources and sanitation globally. 5) The UN reaffirms its commitment to limit environmental damage.
These topics were very current, so listening to the speeches was interesting (and often entertaining) to learn about what different countries' perspectives were, especially the schools' representing Russia and Ukraine for remit 2! The remits we chose were remit 1 and 2. Research into the perspectives of Hungarian’s on these issues was really interesting because it’s something I hadn’t done before - representing a country's point of view.
On the first day, there was breakfast in the morning where we were able to converse with other ‘countries’. This was a really great icebreaker, especially with all the amazing country costumes. During the speeches there was an opportunity to communicate with other countries with note passing, this was a fun part of it as we would come to agreements (and disagreements) about voting on the remits.
Guest speaker, Minister for Pacific Peoples' Aupito William Sio, gave valuable insight about what international politics is like in the 'real world'.
Overall, this was a great experience. It was an opportunity to see how Nations cooperate and the conflicts and alliances that come with being part of the United Nations.
