Rotary District 5340’s Model United Nations Program trains high school students to be effective negotiators and diplomats by debating current-day international issues that are presently being addressed by the real United Nations. Our 2019 Model United Nations Conference, which basically simulates a United Nations General Assembly Conference, will be held at the University of San Diego, Institute of Peace and Justice, on April 6-7, 2019. We expect to have teams from Southern California, as well as from Mexico, Costa Rica, Peru, Honduras, Dominican Republic and British Columbia, Canada!
One of the most exciting things about putting on our Model UN Conference is selecting current global issues that the UN is tackling itself and preparing the Resolutions for our Conference. We are looking for colleagues who want to give back to the youth in our community, and who love to read and write and/or who have some background or strong interest in international relations, law, political science or government or community relations. We would thoroughly enjoy partnering with some creative folks to help us draft our two Resolutions for our 2019 Model UN Conference. This is a very rewarding experience as you get to see how the Model UN students analyze and interpret the proposed solution to the problem that you posit in the Resolution and the myriad of approaches they take to modify and reach consensus on those issues.
Our Model UN Conference is a non-competitive event where students become “ambassadors/delegates” of foreign countries and have to argue their country’s position on two Resolutions that deal with pressing global issues that the real UN has been recently addressing. This past year we addressed a unique proposal to add Palestine as a new member country into the UN and the continuing Israeli/Palestinian conflict, and the alarming situation with microplastic pollution in our global oceans and proposed terms for a new international treaty to protect our oceans. The focus of our program is to teach students about international affairs, and more particularly, how to effectively negotiate, peacefully resolve conflicts, publicly present one’s positions, and engender and achieve consensus-building among divergent interests. Please check out our website at www.modelunrotary5340.com.
The General Assembly agenda for its next upcoming session is usually available in August/September. We try to pattern our Resolution topics on issues in the GA’s agenda and/or other current pressing global issues where the UN should be involved. We select and finalize the topics for our two Resolutions in October and need to pick issues that will not be resolved by the time we have our Conference in April the following year. The people selected to write the Resolutions then research the topics and draft the Resolutions in November and December. We need the Resolutions to be finalized by 12/31 in order to prepare for our training session at the end of January.
Please contact Kevin Cahill, Chair, District 5340 Model United Nations Program, at (858) 229-5227, or by email at kcahill558@gmail.com, if you are interested in becoming involved in preparing our Model UN Resolutions.