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| Shaping the leaders of tomorrow |
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Tuesday, September 29, 2009
By Gibran Ashraf
Karachi
A Model United Nations (MUNs) session was organised in Karachi recently by a group of MUN veterans at a local hotel. The event saw the participation of some 140 students from nearly 30 schools and colleges from the city and one school from Lahore.
While MUNs have been organised by various organisations in Pakistan, with the annual event being held in the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMUN), which is by far the most popular and prestigious, Karachi never had an event of this scale. This is surprising as for the past few years, the champions at LUMUN have been from A’ Level schools of Karachi, beating out tough oppostition.
At this particular event, while nearly 140 participants turned up, organisers felt the number of the participants was low.
Organised under the auspices of ROTRACT by Taimur Hasan Noorani, a two time champion of LUMUN, who holds the post of the Secretary General. Along with him were former winners and LUMUN veterans, some of whom had even made it as far as the International Model UN in Switzerland.
All the participants were divided into teams of eight representing nearly 20 countries. The division of the countries was done on the basis of experience per team. The teams were then broken up and placed in three different simulated committees of the UN, the Economic and Social Council, the Disarmament and International Security Council and the Special Political and Decolonisation Council, all working as per the procedural codes of the UN.
An additional fourth council, the Crisis Committee, was also simulated. The Crisis Committee at the ROTMUN worked on emerging crisis, having three hours to come up with a peaceful resolution for growing problems and subsequent events which altered the challenge being presented.
Talking to The News, Noorani explained that the main purpose behind it all is that, “such an event offers the opportunity to explore world issues and learn more about different countries and have a more unbiased stance about world events. I had to represent Israel in my previous experience at LUMUN and I found out that there was positive angle to the generally maligned policies of a country who we write off as Jews who should be bombed. In fact, talk to kids today and bombing is the answer that we attach as a solution to any global problem”.
This is just half of what such conferences are about. Noorani elaborates that for those who come to the MUN, it also gives them an opportunity to develop or even improve their confidence, leadership, public speaking and negotiating skills, as well as crisis management capabilities, resolution drafting, and case building skills.
As this four-day conference came to a close, all of the participants were learning about the different countries they represented and through the interaction with the representatives of other countries.
And while many of them conceded that being a diplomat or being involved in foreign affairs was not exactly a career option that most of them looked at before the conference, now they had a better idea about what it entailed.
The winners of the ROTMUN `09 were Karachi Grammar School (KGS). Lyceum School came second while Institute of Business Administration (IBA) took third place.
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ISSN 1563-9479 
