8 months worth of planning finally culminated in the 29th Session of COMUN in which 360 students from over 20 schools participated over 3 days of intensive debate. My COMUN journey began when I was a naive 7th grader, freshed faced to the MUN circuit in Sri Lankan and without an inkling of a clue to anything related to multilateralism; it’s safe to say that COMUN has changed the trajectory of my life. Throughout the course of 5 years I have undertaken many roles from being an IPC journalist, to an ICJ judge to a member of the EXCO last year. This year for my last and final conference I was bestowed the honor of being the secretary general of COMUN XXIX (a title I will come to miss signing emails with). A different set of duties framed my conference experience this year as I essentially was the face of this year’s conference and alongside my wonderful team ensured that this conference, which marked the return to it being a physical event in over 2 years, went smoothly and was a fruitful experience for everyone involved.
The dawn of March the 4th marked the beginning of the conference, where overnight the OSC campus has turned into a wonderful space ready to host several brilliant minds for debate. Only with the help of Mr. Ajith, Ms. Shiroma, Mr, Geeth, Mr. Lakishtha and other OSC staff members made this possible. The opening ceremony happened in our auditorium with Mr. David Blackman, economist at the United Nations, graced us with his presence as our guest speaker in which he delivered a rousing speech on what is the role Sri Lanka’s youth should take in shaping the future and how that can be achieved in working in a field like international relations or political science. To end the ceremony I gave a short speech in which I got to utter the infamous phrase “by the power vested in me as Secretary General, I hereby declare this session open”. After watching all of my predecessors declare those words in front of me in past opening ceremonies, it was an emotional moment to be standing on the other side of the podium gazing down at all the delegates. All this can be viewed from here.
Afterwards Mr.Blackman was kind enough to join us on tour of all the committees in which he was able to see the payoff of all the delegates hard work as they fiercely debated from issues of modern slavery to restructuring global financial situations to boldly in the the Security Council tackling the topic of amending the UN charter. One goal I had as Secretary General in which the idea was initially proposed to me by Imaad Mashoor, the president of the Security Council was to try and see how we can put to use the solutions suggested in committee to see some real life impact. Both Mr. Blackman and Mr.Christian Skoog, UNICEF representative, were interested in reading the resolutions produced on day two of the conference which proved to be quite the incentive for delegates to bring forth innovative solutions.
Other major projects that we were able to complete this year includes our fellowship with SLMUN. As the two major conferences in Sri Lanka, in all our years of existence there has been a lack of recognition and mutual antipathy despite sharing a lot of chairs and delegates. Which is why when the Secretary General of SLMUN 2023 approached me about starting a fellowship that hopefully would plant the seed of lasting partnership. The first part of the fellowship included a friendly cricket match where both executive committees got to know each other better. But for conference we both agreed that something that needed to be added is opportunities to have lasting impact which is why this year the annual service project was a book drive. With the help of the 20 schools participating in the end we were able to collect over 6000 books in English, Sinhala and Tamil. Over the course of the next few months these books will make their way across the Island with plans to reach underfunded schools all the way in Jaffna and Ingiriya (a donation from COMUN to the US Peace Corps visit on the 6th). To solidify our new found friendship with SLMUN, Rayhan and I took part in an official signing of Memorandum of Understanding, affectionately nicknamed the Pep-Rayhan Declaration.
The final day of COMUN was held at Monarch Imperial, in which 2 bloc of crisis were formed: the general assemblies and the specialized committees. Crisis is a segment of MUN, where delegates must use their prior knowledge on countries foreign policy stance and their critical thinking skills to navigate their way through highly fictionalized scenarios. To gain a sense of how dramatic these events turn out: this year, Mr.Russo the OSC Faculty Advisor, made a guest appearance as President Joe Biden in the specialized committee crisis where at the end of his speech he got kidnapped by rogue pirates. From the level of serious debate exhibited on the first two days, the crisis segment serves as a good opportunity for delegates to relax and have fun with the idea of diplomacy.