This year, over the first week of the Easter holidays, nearly forty students from Fourth and Fifth year participated in the St Andrew's International Model United Nations, which was held in the Royal Marine Hotel in Dun Laoghaire. MUN aims to be a simulation of the real United Nations – complete with Security Council, General Assembly, as well as a wide range of other committees – where students can come together and share their enthusiasm for politics, diplomacy, international affairs and help to produce solutions to some of the greatest problems facing our world today. The ambition behind MUN is to encourage young people to speak out on world issues and to submit and discuss their own ideas and thoughts, to help combat these problems.
We represented six different countries: Georgia, South Africa, Rwanda, Kenya, Egypt and the Maldives. This year six students completed their second conference, taking on special roles as ambassadors, with over thirty getting involved for the first time. The conference welcomed nearly 700 delegates from twenty different countries around the world, and we spent the week engaging in insightful and fruitful debate, regarding issues such as government surveillance, state-sponsored paramilitary groups, child marriage and climate change, to name but a few. As always, this year's MUN proved to be another wonderful, and invaluable, experience and, despite some nerves in the days beforehand, all of our preparation over the past few months certainly paid off.
MUN is undoubtedly an incredible activity to take part in, from the research required beforehand, to the adoption of views and perspectives other than one's own, to the countless life-long friends you make from around the world each year and, perhaps finally, that final satisfaction of raising your placard and knowing you helped in creating a resolution that made it to the General Assembly. And so, after our unforgettable experiences at Model United Nations, perhaps we can finish knowing that one day, we can do the same at the real United Nations.