Our first simulation last weekend is over and left us all impressed but also very exhausted. As many of us have never participated in such a simulation before, we did not really know what to expect.
First day:
Starting on Saturday morning, we directly went into formal session, where each and everyone of us represented a country – such as Nigeria, India, Russia, Japan or Germany. Two topics were on the agenda: firstly, ‚Combatting the illicit trade on small arms and light weapons‘, secondly, ‚Capacity building in combatting climate change in developing countries‘. The Agenda Setting Speeches went quite smooth as we had already practised it before and lastly led to the decision of firstly dealing with topic 1.
Definitely more challenging was making sure to not let the speakers‘ list run out. In such a small simulation it was inevitable to be on it pretty much all the time. Although we tried our best, it unfortunately ran out two times during the simulation. For the upcoming HMUN and TMUN we are definitely going to focus on this to not let it happen again!
Apart from the formal session, we were also able to bring in motions of an informal caucus in order to write working papers. Basically, two working groups were formed and at the end of Saturdays‘ session, both groups luckily managed to hand in their first working paper. Of course, some heated debates were not missing during this process.
Apart from that, we took photos of the delegation of 2020 in our lunch break. We are going to upload them soon on our website to give you impressions of this years‘ delegates.
All in all a great and productive start for our first simulation!
Day 2:
With having some first experience from the day before, we were easily able to go on with the simulation on Sunday. We now knew, what to expect and what to improve. Not only did we feel more confident but also a lot more comfortable speaking in front of other delgates mostly without having prepared speeches. During caucus, every group was able to improve their working papers which finally led to two draft resolutions. Trying to convince other countries to vote in favor of the own draft resolution definitely was more challenging and hard work – including many debates, amendments and compromises.
Voting procedure and successfully passing even two resolutions was therefore very rewarding and made us all really proud. This was the perfect example of hard work paying off!
In conclusion, our first simulation was an awesome experience. Apart from learning a lot, we had even more fun and are looking forward to the upcoming simulations in January!