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Last Saturday, the delegation completed its second Model United Nations with a great success and as promised, we bring you a short report from it.

The Hohenheim Castle MUN, organised by the Club of Hohenheim every year since 2001, was already the next-to-last opportunity to gain a firsthand experience with a Model UN. In total, 60 students from University of Tübingen, Heidelberg, Hohenheim, and Stuttgart participated. The simulation was therefore much larger than our own first try-out model and no major player in the international arena was missing, as every delegate represented one UN member state.

The agenda of the HCMUN 2015 consisted of three diverse and highly up-to-date topics:

1. The Control of Biological Weapons in Today’s Modern Era
2. Women in Development
3. The Right to Privacy in the Digital Age

It was not long after the beginning of the meeting, that the agenda order of 1-2-3 was adopted, which effectively meant that the whole body would be dealing with the issue of biological weapons and their proliferation for the rest of the day. The main discussions revolved around the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) and the 1925 Geneva Protocol.

The negotiations were challenging, as all working papers had to be conceived and agreed upon in a single day. Five draft resolutions emerged in the end, most of them dealing with the issues of transparency, exchange of information, support of peaceful research and the danger of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction to non-state actors. The BWC served as a main focus for all draft resolutions and states that did not ratify it were urged to do so. In the final voting procedure, four out of five resolutions were adopted.

The HCMUN was another priceless experience in preparing for the final MUN in New York. Our delegation is also proud to have received the awards for the 2nd and 3rd best delegate, acquired respectively by Ina Majewski and Sahana Sreedar (both member of the General Assembly First Committee in New York).

We would like to thank the team of organisers very much for preparing this year’s HCMUN and we will do our best to make the Tübingen MUN at least as interesting and pleasant an experience for everyone as the Hohenheim organisers managed to do.

The year 2014 is history and we hope you enjoyed the Christmas break as much as we did. However, the new year means that the New York conference is inevitably closing in and becoming more and more real. So what progress have the delegates made so far?

First of all, the delegation is preparing for its second real-life experience with a Model UN, namely the Hohenheim Castle Model United Nations 2015, which takes place already this Saturday. You can be expecting a special report from this event next week.

Most importantly, the delegation is now in the phase of writing position papers, which represent the most important outcome of preparations for the NMUN. But what exactly is a position paper?

A position paper sums up each of every three topics of the respective committee and the country’s position on it – hence the name. This requires a lot of research, as the delegated need to not only gain overview of the main documents and concepts accepted and being discussed in the UN, but also to understand the motivation, position, and behaviour of Iraq regarding very specific issues. Assessment of current issues, recommendations, and calls for action are also an integral part of the document.

What takes some getting used to is that the aim of the position paper is not to provide thorough analysis of the issue, but to promote the country itself, its interests, and its actions within the UN. Another challenge is not to waste any space and use every sentence to express something important, as the whole paper is to be only two pages long.

Given its importance, there are three deadlines to hand in the position papers. The final versions are then sent to New York, where they are evaluated. The first versions were completed before Christmas and the delegates are now busy re-working them, trying to implement the feedback of the Head Delegates to make their position papers as good as possible. Wish them luck!

As the planning of our trip to Geneva and New York precede so do our efforts in fundraising in order to finance all these travels. It all started with the Clubhaus party which we hosted together with the Fachschaft Politik. Apart from good music and a nice atmosphere there has also been tombola with some fancy prizes to win. During the chocolate market the whole delegation was busy counting incoming people and conducting a survey. Despite or maybe just because of the cold weather and some organizational challenges it was a special experience that further increased the already very good team spirit among us. As additional fundraising activity we are also selling delicious wafers outside Brechtbau every week during lunchtime. So if you feel the need for something sweet just stop by!

Concerning the substantive work every committee just handed in their Landmark Document, which is a basic outline of the resolutions relevant for the respective committees and Iraq’s position to those. This document will serve as a reference for the further preparation and as a starting point for the Position Paper which will finally be sent to New York. However, as the position of Iraq was not always easy to find or deduce, the search will go on!

As the new academic year has been in progress for some time, the preparations for the next simulation are already under way! A new conference means new experiences, a new delegation and of course a new country to represent.

We are proud to announce that 20 students have been selected to represent the Republic of Iraq at the 2015 National Model United Nations Conference in New York, taking place from 29th March to 2nd April 2015. You are welcome to have a look at the committees in which delegates will be present, and the topics that will be discussed there: http://nmun-tuebingen.de/committees/.

We are very much looking forward to the experience, as it will certainly be a very challenging and at the same time interesting task to represent Iraq.

Returning from a very instructive weekend in Hohenheim, New York seems one step closer to us now. At our second Simulation, the “Hohenheim Castle Model United Nations”, we were able to experience the challenges of a committee with over 50 delegates for the first time. Although barely half of the Delegation was able to present an agenda setting speech, the committee decided to set topic 1, “Measures to Prevent Terrorists from Acquiring Weapons of Mass Destruction” on top of the agenda. The Tübingen delegation immediately started to deal with the topic by giving speeches in formal session and gathering in working groups with delegates from Hohenheim and Heidelberg during informal caucus.

We were happy to see how much progress we all have made since we first met in the beginning of the semester. Especially the rules of procedure were applied more and more confidently. By the end of a productive simulation, the committee was eventually able to adopt two out of three resolutions. Exhausted and satisfied with our own work we joined the famous wine tasting in Hohenheim Castle for the rest of the evening.

We would like to thank the organizers of HCMUN for an excellent simulation. The Tübingen Delegation of 2015 will surely be looking forward to this great event!