Camila attends Model United Nations Conference

My name is Camila Barns, and from the 4th - 7th of July, I attended the New Zealand Model United Nations as the delegate of India. NZMUN is a conference held in Wellington at the University of Victoria where students from across New Zealand and Australia congregate to discuss and resolve current issues in a process modelled after the United Nations. 

Every participant is assigned a country, and our task is to research how our countries would be effected by current issues, such as: The unpredictable and unprecedented rate of AI development, the question of global democracy, and potential effects on climate change from seabed mining. From the basis of that research, delegates would then amend a document called a resolution, intended to implement potential laws to resolve an issue. We then vote for or against amendments of a resolution, and debate in favour for or against the resolution as a whole, so that it would fit according to what would benefit our countries.

NZMUN also is an incredible opportunity to make new friends! The first night, we visited Parliament and heard from various guest speakers, including Minister of Finance, Nicola Willis. The next evening we attended regional dinners, where geographic neighbourhoods such as my own being Central Asia, enjoyed a complementary dinner at a restaurant related to their continent’s cuisine. For the third day, we celebrated the highly anticipated NZMUN gala, which is an exciting opportunity to socialise in a thrilling environment!

If you are interested in attending this event next year, have a look at UNYouth’s website. They also host shorter events, as well as Model Parliament. Their events are typically for high school students from years 9-13, but are most definitely learning opportunities no matter what age.

To conclude, I could not recommend this experience more. I have made incredible relationships and memories that I know I will appreciate for years to come, engaged in impassioned debates and broadened my understanding of the way things work in a global context.