Introduction

   Colombo Operated Model United Nations (COMUN) conference is an entirely student-run annual MUN conference hosted by the Overseas School of Colombo. Model United Nations (MUN) conferences stimulate debate held in UN bodies over a wide variety of pertaining global issues – ranging from international disarmament (GA1) all the way to analysing the potent restructuring of global financial markets (G20). Students represent delegates of member nations, debating and putting forward their nation’s foreign policy and unique solutions on the topic whilst scrutinising those of other fellow delegates.

   The voyage started early November 2023 after Pep Fernando, the Secretary General of COMUN XXIX, inducted the secretariat for the conference; Chathma (USG), Gokul (PGA), Myself (HoO) & David (HoA). We commenced our first duty of finalising the executive committee for conference soon afterwards and ended up with a total of 32 members to make COMUN XXIX a reality.

Structure of Conference

   The first month was spent conceptualising and finalising the structure we wanted the conference to take. Traditionally, Sri Lankan MUN tends to sway heavily on aggressive debate with a muted emphasis on diplomacy and problem-solving – an issue we wanted to address. Promoting problem-solving and diplomacy would require a shift in the mentality and research of prospective delegates – and how we incentivised such behaviour and modelled topics. Hence it was unanimously decided that we would integrate and promote such practices from delegates, starting from revamping our points system all the way to our specialised study guides.

   Furthermore, we wanted COMUN to be a proper representation of the modern world and the problems it faces – a conference which breaks down today’s society and critically solves its problems through practical plans. We needed to achieve all of this, with the signature quality of debate and element of fun COMUN always had – hence our selection of committees; GA1, GA3, GA4, G20, LAS, SC, IPC. From humanitarian crises, justice for women like Mahsa Amini, modern colonialism, nuclear & biological weapons regulation and even tackling daunting flaws in the UN charter – we covered it all.

   Finally, towards the end of November, we finalised all of the topics and committees as well as a detailed timeline which covered every major event all the way up till the conference:

December 14, 2022 – First Draft: Study Guides

December 25, 2022 – Registrations Open

January 3, 2023 – Final Draft: Study Guides

January 14, 2023 – Faculty Advisor Meeting & Website + Study Guides Uploaded

January 28, 2023 – First Practice Debate

February 11, 2023 – Second Practice Debate

February 12, 2023 -Third Practice Debate

February 17, 2023 – EXCO Party!

March 4-6, 2023 – COMUN XXIX

Photo Courtesy of Vinuda Weerasinghe.
(L-R): Me, Taya Pep Fernando (SG), Chathma Punchihewa (USG), David Maurice (Head of Administrations) & Gokul Parasuraman (President of General Assemblies).

Photo courtesy of Vinuda Weerasinghe. The Executive Committee of COMUN XXIX

Logistics & Finances 

   That brings us to the burning question in your mind – what is my job as Head of Operations? Read the heading of this section once more – that’s right, I am the guy in charge of everything that happens in the background. Managing the finances for this event was my main job – along with finding countless vendors for all our needs. After a few days of being dissolved in mathematics and google sheets, I made an entire suite to track our inflows and outflows of money. Additionally, keeping in mind the extremely high inflationary prices we had to deal with this year, along with our responsibility to charge a fair rate for delegates to ensure that it is affordable for all students – government or international, I placed the fees at:

Private Delegate – LKR: 5000/-

School Delegates – LKR: 4500/-

School Registering Fees – LKR: 4000/-

    My accounting sheets below have a detailed breakdown of our event – but just to crunch some numbers, we spent close to LKR 4 million, earned LKR 1.7 million from delegate fees, had a leftover LKR 1.27 million in the account from previous years’ and an additional LKR 900,000 was granted by school.

My accounting sheet which contains every expense and inflow of funds for COMUN. The columns break down the expenditure for delegates, executive committee members and bulk costs such as the reception hall for the last day of conference. The totals marked in orange are expenditures and the totals marked in green are our sources of income. Finally the balance sheet totals the incomes and expenditures and gives the final total.

This sheet lists every payment we made to our vendors, along with a break down of what they supplied. All payments were fulfilled by the OSC business office through our COMUN HNB account – to which we received payments from delegates as well.

This sheet kept a record of the registrations we received – detailing the schools that attend, the number of delegates they sent and their overall fee. It also includes private delegates.

   Gokul (President of General Assemblies) and I spent a whole tedious morning during COMUN’s delegate training workshop in order to allocate countries to school and private delegates. We provided countries per delegation according to the committees they requested upon registering. Additionally, we had to evenly distribute countries based on their political and economic status in order to ensure fairness. the p5 nations, however, were given to delegations that have proven themselves over the course of comun’s history:

Different schools registered different numbers of delegates, with Gateway College Dehiwala registering the most (37). Hence we had to cater accordingly and spread out countries fairly.

requirements and vendors for COMUN XXIX:

Designs for medals, plaques, gavels and nametags courtesy of Kent Trophies:

Designs for certificates and country placards courtesy of our head of technology – Vinuda weerasinghe – fulfilled by leaf:

Invoices from all our vendors (open accounting to prove I didn’t steal money :P):

   After almost two dozen trips back and forth between different vendors, countless calls from Imperial Monarch’s Sales Manager and over 200 emails, everything pieced together beautifully.