The reason I joined COMUN was to really try something new for my Creativity aspect of CAS. I think that COMUN was a good choice for this aspect, as I learnt a lot of multiple valuable life skills, and had some fun experiences along the way.

The Delegates Workshop

On December 7th the COMUN delegates workshop was held in the OSC Auditorium for new delegates of COMUN. I had to attend this meeting as I am a new delegate. In this meeting we went over everything we need to know, starting from the very basics.

We started by knowing what attire to wear for the different events. For the practice debates which are on the 18th of January and the 1st and 29th of February we have to wear just normal smart casual attire. For the actual conference in March we have to wear full formal wear. We also learned about what motions are, such as motions to move into roll call and motions to adopt agendas, which are said at the beginning of conference.

After this we moved into the next part of the meeting where we learned about points. There are a lot of points in which I took notes on, but some of the more notable ones are Points of Information (POI). POI’s are what you raise when you want to ask a delegate a question. Next we moved onto the importance of research for the debates. We learned how by researching we learn about the UN system, committee mandate and just overall general information on the UN.

We also learned about the different speeches, such as speakers list. The speakers list is a base for what you’re going to carry out as a delegate. It is a summarization of your foreign policy. Another speech I learned about is the moderated caucus. It is a topic which is chosen to discuss in further during the conference. We also learned about Foreign Policy Statements (FPS).

The final thing we learned about were the different committees. This was important as it helps me choose the committee that I would like to do. The different committee’s are GA1, GA3, UNEP, ECOSOC, ICJ, UNSC and IPC. I chose to do IPC, the International Press Committee, as the focus of the committee is journalism and writing articles and op-eds on the topics in the conference. I feel like writing is one of my strong suits, so going into this committee is a good choice for me.

The Practice Debates

The practice debates were held in February and March. We had to attend at least two out of three of them, and I attended the two that were held in February. In the first practice debate as an IPC journalist we spent a lot of time just learning what we were to do in the final conference. We talked about writing editorials and articles, and also touched on what we be doing in crisis during conference day. After learning how to write an article, we then actually wrote one on what was happening during the debates of our committee. I chose UNEP (United Nations Environment Program) and wrote about what was being talked about in that committee. During the second practice debate we did the same thing, except with the editorial. We learned how to write a good editorial, and then used what we learned and wrote about a topic discussed in our committee.

These practice debates were very helpful for the final conference, as the feedback I got from my supervisors were very helpful for me to know what to improve on, and to later on end up making the perfect editorial.

Final Conference

The final 3 days of conference were held on the 6th, 7th and 8th of March, with the first 2 days at school, and the final day held at the Taj hotel. The way the conference worked for us IPC journalists is that on the first day we were to right an editorial on the topic in our committee, on the second day we had to write an article and finally on the third day we had to report on the events happening in crisis using a Twitter account for our organization.

The first day went well for me, as I wrote an editorial on how ready countries were for climate migrations, and I compared facts from Russia, Brazil and USA. I also think my article about discussions on climate migration from day 2 was also done well. Day 3 was definitely the most fun, as in my committee for crisis the topics that were coming up were really interesting, and hearing delegates discuss them was also interesting. Controlling the Twitter account was also fun, as it really made me feel like an actual journalist listening to actual UN conversations. At the end of the day it was the closing ceremony, and prizes were awarded. For the IPC journalists, I was close to getting the award for the best crisis delegation for the Twitter account, but just missed out on it from the BBC delegates.

Learning Outcomes

To relate to the CAS learning outcomes, the delegates workshop is connected to ‘identifying own strengths’ as I identified that one of my strengths is writing, and choosing the committee that makes articles is me finding my strengths and building upon them.

Another learning outcome which this process relates to, for me, is ‘demonstrate that they have undertaken challenges, developing new skills in the process’. Going into COMUN for the very first time was definitely a challenge, as I was surrounded by much more experienced delegates. However, through the practice debates I developed skills that allowed me to be in contention for awards in the final conference.

Finally. one learning outcome which the whole of COMUN relates to is ‘demonstrate engagement with issues of global importance’. The whole premise of COMUN is to discuss issues from around the world such as climate change, war and political issues.

Overall, this COMUN experience was one I won’t forget because of all the new skills I learned, and from all the fun I had.