UWCRBC @MUNISH 2017

 

 

From 2-6 November 2017, eight students—five first-year and three second-year—from UWC Robert Bosch College travelled to attend the MUNISH (Model UN—International School of The Hague) conference. Five students attended as delegates, two as ambassadors, and one as a student officer.

With a yearly attendance of more than 1,000 high school students from across Europe and beyond, MUNISH is one of the Netherlands’ largest, best-known, and most rapidly growing MUN conferences. The theme of this year’s 27th annual conference was “Peace, Justice, and Inclusive Societies”—derived from United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 16: “Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels.” Each RBC students attending this year’s conference engaged this theme and other pressing issues with tenacity, maturity, and respect.

All seven delegates—including the two ambassadors, who delivered opening speeches to a several-hundred-person General Assembly Plenary—represented Indonesia. In preparing for the conference, delegates have to review the lengthy research reports written by their committee chairs on assigned topics (some committees, like the Human Rights Commission and Disarmament Commission, had as many as four topics!) and prepare draft resolutions that can be combined with others’ and amended to accomplish the objectives of a maximum number of countries represented. Despite a long overnight bus journey the night before the conference started, all our students were able to help write resolutions that passed their committees while also meeting and establishing bonds with host families, students from other UWCs, and everyone else who touched our lives during this spectacular weekend of MUN.