Reported by Anirudh Madhavan and Ananya Balaji
Sri Sankara Senior Secondary School held their Model United Nations conference, SanMUN 2013, on August 9,11 and 12, this year. It was held from 9 a.m to 3.30 p.m. on all these days.
Ajit Singh, Consulate General of the Republic of Singapore, Chennai inaugurated the SanMun 2013. N. Kumar, Honorary Counsel for Greece was a guest of honour. 327 delegated representing 23 schools from Chennai, Bangalore and Sharjah U.A.E. participated in six committees.
The MUN simulated six of the major MUN committees. Disarmament and Security Committee, United Nations Environment Program, Futuristic Continual Crisis Committee, Economic and Social Council, Human Rights Council and Security Council.
The chairs, vice chairs and moderators for each of these committees were students from Sri Sankara school and other schools, who were well versed with MUN and its workings. The secretary general of the MUN, Akshat Jain, a student of Sankara school has an astounding experience of 17 MUN’s. He was also the chair of UNEP, his preferred committee.
The conference was declared open by the Secretary General and for the next three days what followed was some fantastic debating and resolution making on various issues of importance as well as value in various committees.
Each committee also formed its own resolution to their agendas, which gives hope that students can be the peacekeepers of the future. Students debated upon several topics such as energy sharing, family issues, unemployment, economic crisis and conflict in the Middle East in UNHRC, UNEP, DISEC, Economic and Social Council, UNSC and Futuristic Continual Crisis Committee. Resolutions were passed in all committees.
The conference was formally closed on the 11th of August around 3.30 p.m in the afternoon. After this, there was an awards ceremony to recognise the best delegates from each committee, and the delegate who had submitted the best Position Paper, a paper explaining the stance of a country on the issue and proposed solutions.
Bishop cotton boys school, Bangalore representing Palestine and PSBB, Nungambakkam representing the U.K, won the best delegates award.
The Executive Board comprising of all the chairs were given awards too for their hard work. There was also a feedback session to evaluate the quality of the MUN. SanMUN 2013, the eight edition of the most popular MUN in Chennai once again was at its best and enthralled students by introducing them to the eternal message that “Change begins with us. We are the change we seek.”
When YOCee’s student reporters get busy, the team at YOCee’s small office takes up the role of the reporters, does the rounds, writes copies and files reports. The team also posts useful info and ePapers produced in-house.