It came to the most important moment of the five-day-session when the chair said in a very serious tone: “Those who are for the draft resolution 1.3. Please raise your placard.” I raised my placard—a paper with the name of the country I represented on it— high and firm while the chair and the assistant chairs double checked who voted for this draft resolution (DR), a formal form of putting abstract ideas into written papers. The DR which is the product under cooperation should be recognized by the chair first and then delegates, the people who attend the conference, can vote for it. “Because the vote doesn’t pass two thirds of the committee, this draft resolution automatically fails.” At this moment, delegates in my African bloc, including me, can’t conceal the disappointment on our faces. However, our attention was soon dragged back to the voting procedure because the final consequence hadn’t come out yet. “Those delegates who are in favor of the draft resolution 1.4, please raise your placard, and just a reminder, this is our last introduced resolution,” said the chair, Rachna Raina, from Harvard University. Almost all of the delegates raised their placards. The atmosphere was full of excitement and nervousness because it meant that the five days of debating and sessions were going to lower the curtain. “With votes from over two thirds of the 54 delegates, the draft resolution is passed!” The cheers and claps immediately burst out in the chamber, and delegates in the room started to congratulate each other by hugging and smiling. Happiness was on everybody’s face. After paying so much effort and participating in the most intense debate, the World Model United Nations 2011 was about to come to its end.
According to the resources in the World MUN 101 (a handbook for basic introduction)World Model United Nations conference (hereafter WMUN), simulated from the United Nations, is an international activity held by Harvard University and its host country’s university that gathers hundreds of college and university students from all over the globe. The “World MUN Spirit” which is a spirit of friendship and cooperation across borders and a deeper understanding of cultures and perspectives beyond one’s own. This is what the whole WMUN is based on. During the daytimes, WMUN dedicates to creating a platform for students to participate the international affairs. At night, WMUN holds various nightly activities called social events for socializing and knowing foreign cultures. During the conferences, the attendees need to represent a country, an organization or a country’s leader in order to debate pressing international issues and the conferences end when finally an introduced draft resolution is passed. This year, the WMUN was held in Singapore, a country that blends modern views and multiple cultures from Asian, Southeast Asian and western cultures, an ideal place to embody the World MUN Spirit.
My group members and I arrived in the Singapore at noon. When stepping outside the plane, the humid air, and the burning hot sunshine displayed the typical weather of tropical zone. After every one of us took the luggage, we headed to the shuttle station for transferring to our hotel. I kept looking around the Changi International Airport. It was a modern building decorated with lots of glass and irons. In the airport lobby, we met the crews of the WMUN host team. The reason why we can recognized them immediately was because they all wore a purple T-shirt with which the logo of WMUN printed at the front and the word “CREW” printed at the back. They were all volunteers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) and after a short talk, they wished us:”Have fun in the next few days!”
The official schedule of WMUN was from March 14th to March 18th. On Monday, the first day was the registration day and the opening ceremony. We came to the campus of National University of Singapore for the registration procedure. Students from all over the world already crowded in the lobby chatting in English, German, Spanish and the other languages. Red hair, blue eyes, and black skin, it felt like a miniature global village. In the opening ceremony, people sit in an auditorium and waited for the ceremony to begin. The auditorium could at least accommodate two thousand people and there were no empty seats. During the ceremony, the Co-President of the host team encouraged us to meet a new friend everyday in the next five days, and then kept this friendship forever, even back to our own country.
Ben, a 19-year-old student from Hong Kong said that he wanted to broaden his view through WMUN which was his biggest goal. Ben’s further explanation of his expectation towards WMUN was that he thought WMUN could inspire one potential and challenge one’s ability of public speaking and collaboration. “This was a good chance for self-examining,” said Ben with a fairly serious tone. “Unfortunately, I didn’t do well this time.”
The first section of the conferences began on Tuesday and all the conferences of WMUN 2011were held in the Suntec Hotel. Every delegate would be assigned to a committee in these five days and I was assigned to United Nations Human Rights Council, UNHRC for the conferences. I represented an African country Cameroon in this committee. UNHRC was rather a smaller one than the others. It only contained 47 countries with 54 delegates in it. This committee mainly discussed the issues about human rights worldwide, including the ensuring of the universally recognized human rights and the implementation of basic human rights.
After arriving in the hall of the Suntec Hotel at around 8:45am, my group members and I went to our own committees separately. Suntec Hotel was a place where lots of chambers were prepared for all size of committees, from the huge committee SPECPOL which contained more than 300 people to the small G20, apparently with only twenty people in it. When I got into the room around 8:50am, there were already a little crowd of people chatting with each other. The room was decorated with red carpet and wooden-like wall paper. The desks were set in lines with papers, pens, water, cup glasses on it, and there were even mentos provided. A huge screen was set in the front and the chair and the other assistant chairs sit in the front too. Every one of them had a laptop for recording the conference and moderating the whole sessions. According to Nalaka Buddhika Warnakula, one of the assistant chair from NUS, he explained that his main job is to work closely with the Harvard chair so that the conference can run smoothly.
I found myself a seat in the room, and then I started to greet with every person I saw. Some of the delegates wore the formal meeting suits and the other of them wore their traditional costumes. I went to talk to a girl who wore an orange Arabian headscarf and green robe but she didn’t look like an Arabia. She was actually a Turkish Germany. I asked her why she dressed in this way and she explained in an energetic and exciting tone:” Because I represented United Arab Emirates, I wanted to dress in their traditional way to show my respect.”
The conferences were based on the Rule of Procedure (ROP). It is the only formal set of meeting rules that the real United Nations uses. English is the official language, of course. First of all was to set the agenda and the purpose was to decide which topic we should discuss for the following days. After deciding the topic, whole conferences would get into the next part. The whole conferences were basically constituted by two parts, one was the moderated caucus and the unmoderated caucus. The moderated caucus was with time limit and within the limited time, delegates can go on the stage to express their own position or illustrating some specific issues in depth. As for the unmoderated caucus, it’s like a free time for discussing and delegates can stand up walk around to get more information from the others. It’s also a good time to form blocs in order to get the support from the other delegates. This wasn’t as simple as it sounded like. Trevor Kennedy, a Canadian delegate from the other committee DISEC indicated that forming a bloc and making the DR passed required an extraordinary sense of leadership. “You have to consult the other delegates’ opinions whenever before making a decision and make sure we are still in the same boat, or you will lose their support,” said Trevor.
People were really competitive and professional during the conferences and they were eloquent, fully aware of the skill of debating. However, the atmosphere was not always intense. WMUN provided a very special service which can deliver a note, a flower or a gift from committee to committee. Thus, the chair spent a short time every day for reading the notes in front of the whole committee and delivering the flowers. On Thursday, when the daily “flower time” came, I was called by the chair. She read the anonymous note:” Happy Birthday Jennifer! See you at night”, so everybody knew that day was my birthday. At this moment, my fellow delegates suggested singing a happy birthday song for me. I stood at the front and accepted this special birthday gift with surprise and happiness. That was the most memorable moment in WMUN.
Each night, there were a series of different social events. The social events were the activities designed to make delegates have a more casual environment for socializing and making more friends through various types of different activities, performances and parties. Here, people put away the serious attitude in the daytime and totally relaxed. Each night, the social events held in different places in Singapore. While attending the events, delegates were also encouraged to adventure to the famous tourist spots of Singapore. That was the reason why social events were always held near the famous landmarks.
Global village was the one of the official activities that held at the first night of WMUN. In the Global Village, delegates could introduce their country’s culture, drinks, food and souvenirs to the others. People changed into their casual clothes and many of them put on their traditional customs in order to catch more attention. Shopping from vendor to vendor, I saw the traditional Chinese heavenly lights were right next to the Canadian maple flag and just turned around you could find the postcards from Pakistan were displayed. The global village broke the geographical boundary and made it possible to be shown all at once. The other interesting thing was that almost all the western cultures brought their famous alcohol drinks to this event. Many people crowed around those vendors who provided alcohol drinks. We went to every vendor and tried their wine. Most of the vendors would welcome every comer with hospitality. However, few people would totally neglect us even though we stood in front of him. With the time getting longer, people started to get crazy after drinking mixture of many wine and beers— they yelled, laughed, playing crazy games. A bunch of white men even took off their shirts together and splashed the beer randomly to each other. They totally changed into another person after they took off the suits and got drunk.
Beside the global village scene was a dancing pool with loud music and laser lights. The DJs played the latest pop songs and tried to make the atmosphere higher. Looking around, people moved their body smoothly, sometimes violently with the music. The body movements and the eye contact became the most effective ways for communication because of the loud music—-you can’t really hear what others said. Just a wink, a guy went to dance closely with a girl he never met before and then, he put his hand on her body and even French-kissed her. While I was dancing with my friends, I noticed someone came closer to me and put his hands around my waist. And then suddenly, I was hugged by him from the back. This was the thing I never met before and was not really used to strangers touching me though I knew this was sort of common in a dancing pool. I turned around and left with my friends. It was already after midnight and the party seemed to go on and on.
We attended the social events every night. However, gradually I found no matter what the theme was that night, it always ended up with a party. In the following nights, people seemed not surprised or curious at all that there would always be a station selling beers and cocktails at the entrance of the social event. Parties and alcohol became the reasons why people wanted to join the social events.
The final farewell party was held on the manmade island of Singapore—Sentosa. It was an island with extremely beautiful beach and a lots of recreation facilities. It was a perfect place to hold the closing ceremony because people who visited there would definitely leave a good memory. The white sand, palm trees and the fine views made all the visitors relaxed and lingered on the beach. After the closing ceremony, it was the last party of the five days. Because it was on the beach, every delegate wore their swimming suit or bikinis. I walked along the beach with my friends heading toward the party, and we spotted there were a man and a woman flirting and kissing each other besides the road under a lamp. They absolutely caught every passenger’s eyes because the scene was really “hot”. As soon as we passed by these two people, the blond white woman stopped kissing the man and gave us a dirty look and said in a tone that cannot be anymore despised: “That’s Chinese.” None of us responded her and just left the spot. Apparently, the woman meant only the “Chinese” would fuss about this scene and in the same time, she showed the arrogant that she can have this kind of “romance”.
After experiencing how WMUN worked by myself, some fantasies have broken and some truth under the skin revealed. In all, that was a journey full of excitement and a deeper realization of cultural differences. I asked Trevor how he felt about the WMUN 2011 in Singapore during our video chat on the Skype. He answered:” Well, I really had fun there. WMUN provided an excellent chance for students to have professional conferences and make friends worldwide at a same time. I met many nice people from Asia and this helped me to build the sense of multiculturalism which was very important and necessary because it’s absolutely a globalized era.” I smiled and answered him:”That’s true.”