During this Model UN, we focused on the Syrian Refugee Crisis. Throughout this project we looked at many experiences that the Syrian refugees had to go through. We took on the roles of United Nations representatives that represent their country in what they need and their opinions. The role i took on was the United States, and i was places in committee #6.
The United States was a particularly weird country. I had no trouble researching most of the background information, but when it came time to debate, I sometimes found myself saying my opinion instead of Americas. This only happened a couple of times, and the reason behind it was because the United States has established weird biases against some countries. My committee was one that just wanted to unite in the fight against ISIS and help the refugees. The only reason we weren't able to complete this was because our chairs said it was "unrealistic". The USA wasn't that kind towards refugees, but we were still going to be accepting 110,000 by the end of 2017, which is the highest since 1945. In a survey conducted in 1980, asking people their opinion on Cuban refugees settling in the United States. 71% of Americans said they disapproved. That trend has seen to improve about Syrian refugees, but is still struggling.
Above is a link to an article by the pew research center. This site helped me so much, most of my information comes from this website. It also gave me an inside view on the United States opinion on refugees. An interested thing i learn was that the US public has seldom approved of accepting large numbers of refugees.
position paper
I am very proud of my position paper. I feel like I put a lot of work into it and I researched all my information thoroughly and I was able to convey that in my position paper. My peers critiqued me a lot and I felt that it was what i really what i needed to make this position paper as good as it is right now. I changed it a lot throughout critique, I mostly just added a lot of new information, things that made the US look good aswell as the UN. A part that I am really proud of is including that the US will take in over 110,000 refugees by the end of 2017. Making it the most refugees that the US has taken in since 1945. This fact really fascinated me and I think it surprised a lot of other people as well.
opening speech
Between my first draft and my second draft I changed a lot. My first draft included a lot of information on the US and its stance on refugees, when I was revising I took a step back and realized that it needs to be more about the refugee crisis than my country. In doing this I was able to provide a lot of useful information that helped lead conversations within the debate. If i did Model UN all again, one thing I would change would be the countries I allied with within the debate. I became allies with Syria and although that would be a perfect alliance to defeat ISIS, it was not realistic and by only having tunnel vision for Syria, it blocked out other options for allies to help defeat ISIS.
my experience
I am most proud of how much I spoke. I would consider myself one of the people who spoke the most throughout the whole conference. I brought people into the conversation and I started conversations. I made a lot of allies with different countries to help defeat ISIS and help the refugees. Our whole committee came together to help defeat ISIS and help the refugees, that was a really good thing my committee did. I wouldn't really do anything differently, my committee was a lot of fun. I think we should get students more comfortable with talking, a big thing I noticed was that countries wouldn't speak out of the fear of being "roasted". I think we needed to learn that it wasn't about "roasting" it was about helping the refugees and defeating ISIS.
"golden moment"
A big turning point in our conference, is when we were about to vote on the resolution we created and all the countries approved of. Before we went into voting block, I received a note on my desk, it was from the chairs. The note stated that our resolution was too unrealistic and it said that I, the US, had to cut off my alliances because of the unrealism. I was baffled when i received this note, but I did what I had to do and I cut off my alliance with Syria. This sparked A LOT of conflict and controversy, but then what created even more anger was that I retracted Americas donation of military troops and money to help fight the war and defeat ISIS. This sparked a lot of anger in everyone, but then Germany, one of my allies, also retracted their donation, and then France did, and then the UK did. A lot of countries started to retract their donations and no one knew why. This was a very annoying part in the conference because it forced me as well as other countries to create a resolution in 10 minutes. When we had been working on the previous resolution the whole day before. Over all though, I enjoyed the Model UN project.