MUN Conference May 2010

On May 13th through the15th, I participated in the MUN Conference in Manhattan, NY. MUN stands for Model United Nations. The country I was representing was Equatorial Guinea. My partner and I were in the General Assembly 3rd Committee. This committee deals with social, humanitarian, and cultural affairs. Our topic was Responsibility to Protect AKA R2P. This is the idea that all countries have the obligation to ensure the basic human rights of their citizens. However, if the country fails to do so, the UN has the right to enter the country without the government's approval, and fix the problem. My country, Equatorial Guinea, did not support this idea. It strongly believed that all countries have the right to sovereignty, which is the ability to control what happens in its own territory. Only a handful countries were on our side. In the beginning, it was very hard to find countries that were either against the R2P principle or for it but want severe limitations put on it (if that makes sense o.O). Writing our position paper for this conference was harder than finding people on our side. We could barely find any information on Equatorial Guinea. A position paper should be at least a page long, but ours was barely half a page. See, look at it -> Position Paper. In case you're wondering, the picture at the top left corner is the ceiling of the conference room the 3rd committee was in. Pretty cool, isn't it?
The picture on the left is of a room within the UN building. This is where delegates from all over the world come to debate on world issues. The opening and closing ceremony of the MUN conference also took place here.