Despite having slept for ten hours last night, I am still exhausted from Model UN. One a.m. bedtimes and six o'clock alarms tend to do that to a person, I guess.
All and all, Model UN was amazing. I was extremely unsure of what to do in our first session, but seeing everyone else passing notes to the pages, I decided just jumping in and going with it outweighed the risk of messing up. And it really did. During the opening speeches, I sent notes to Egypt, South Africa, and the Ukraine, three countries that had stances similar on the issue to mine, and I got replies from all saying they'd like to discuss our positions further during the unmoderated caucus. I also got a note from Togo, who agreed with Tanzania's stance and was impressed with my opening speech. When a moderated caucus was motioned for later on, I immediately went over and talked to Ukraine. While we did share similar views on the employment of peacekeeping troops, she was not interested in aligning herself too strongly with the African nations, so we went our separate ways. I then met up with South Africa, and our two countries agreed strongly on the issue.
Later on, Ethiopia invited us to join an alliance between her, Egypt, Togo, Russia, China, and Myanmar, which we accepted. Soon we found our committee polarized between two groups: the western countries such as Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States, who believed that the R2P doctrine should entitle them to "help" states suffering conflict by using military force, and the other countries who feared Western intervention. In the case of Tanzania, both America's war against Iraq in 2003 and the fact that NATO had abused their authorization to invoke R2P in the 2011 situation in Libya to conduct over 7000 airstrikes and arm the civilian rebellion caused a distrust of the motives of Western powers in such conflicts, and a desire to pursue resolutions in which it is regional powers who are providing aid in such situations.
Later on, our group splintered again, with Russia, Sudan, China, and Myanmar splitting off to create their own draft paper based around their desire to never have any outside intervention ever, be it from Western or regional powers. Our ideas began to take shape, with our alliance headed by Egypt, and Brazil taking the lead on the drafting of our working paper. Two of the clauses that ended up included in our final resolution were written by me, which also was kind of cool, and I had a hand in the editing and revising process as well.
Within our group, a bloc formed between myself, Ethiopia, Togo, Rwanda, and South Africa, as we as African nations were in a very similar situation and shared the same reservations about the possibility of our interests being ignored when the rest of our alliance attempted to garner the support of other countries. This fear intensified when it came time to sign on as sponsors, and none of the five of us were allowed a position. Instead, Brazil and Egypt sponsored, as well as Saudi Arabia, who had just joined on to the working paper. Why should the five of us, who had been there since the beginning and had no small part in shaping the clauses and preamble of the working paper, be refused sponsorship? Add to the fact that the three sponsors were male and the five of us were female, and we understandably felt that the situation was a bit unfair.
Despite this and the fact that the three sponsors continually met and discussed the paper behind our backs, we managed to talk our sponsors out of the majority of proposed amendments that did not suit the interests of our countries by using the unspoken suggestion of aligning ourselves with the Western alliance. At the end of the day, our finished paper was a strong resolution that well reflected the interests of us African countries, and in the final vote it won out over the West's paper. I spoke more than a few times during moderated caucuses, supporting our paper and pointing out the shortcomings of our opponents', and while my oral graces were by no means extraordinary, I think all in all my performance was supportive of our cause. Afterwards, our committee had an award ceremony, and I won the category of "Most Enthusiastic." There's something to be said in trying one's best, I suppose.
I also had a blast hanging out with my friends (including my roommate, Harini-of-jade-plant-fame), and both the car ride there and back was thoroughly enjoyable, despite its length and the fact that we were all exhausted on the return trip. Supposedly the organizers will be sending our school our passed resolutions sometime in the indiscriminate future, so whenever that event arrives rest assured I will be uploading our magnum opus, as well as any pictures I deem not too horrible to be seen by the human race.
I yield the remainder of my time to the moderator.
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