Whooo! Two days later I get another opportunity to fill you in on the frustrations of THIMUN. It is very different to Australian MUNing which has caused confusion and a bit of stress amongst our delegates.
So the first day was in full swing by 9am, when we recieved our briefing on the rules of procedure and the room was divided up into our separate resolution topics so we could be diplomatic, merge resolutions and the like because the chair said they would only accept two resolutions on each subject. So you can imagine my horror when pretty much my ENTIRE commission came over to Youth Crime with me. The worst part was, diplomacy really wasn't the main aim of the resolution discussions, proposing was. People gave the impression that if they didn't propose then their life would be basically over. Wow, talk about pressure. A group of us merged resolutions and I said that we should draw the proposer and seconder out of a hat to make it sort of fair (although people complained behind the proposer's back to me afterwards, cause being little girls is really diplomatic) and I was drawn out as seconder! So that's very exciting, the resolution went to Approval Panel today but I'm not sure how it went. I will find out tomorrow.
So that was yesterday at THIMUN in a nutshell, although my host sister, Laura, took me and Honeylyn out with her friends who were also hosting, so most of our delegation spent a night out with our hosts. It was a lot of fun, although we did end up getting locked into a train because the trains are entirly automated and when they shut down, they lock up so you can't get out. Much awkwardness all around. Other than that I made some really great friends who I have also spent today enjoying the company of. Tonight we are spending a quiet night in as tomorrow we are meeting with an ICJ judge and then celebrating Australia day, so we need to get our rest.
Today also saw the start of debate. So firstly, we sat through over 100 very repetitive opening speeches, all one minute long. Some people had some great things to say, others rambled on pointlessly, which was disappointing. I had not been allocated a speech, but the other girl, Sarah, who is in my committee and delegation was. Unfortunately, she had to take her resolution to the Approval Board during the opening speech time and so would miss her speech, meaning I got to deliever her speech instead. So, despite Sarah's misfortune, I was very pleased with being able to deliver a speech to the committee.
Today we debated two resolutions, one on youth crime and the other on cultural differences affect the concept of crime and punishment. There is no speakers list a THIMUN, speakers are called from the floor. This means that you may hear four speeches in a row from the 'for' arguement on the resolution and occassionally, no one from the against, purely because no one knows who is on what side of the debate until they start speaking. Today, in the youth crime resolution, the resolution was passed because we only had about one speech that was against the resolution. This meant easily swayed votes were tipped towards the 'for' side anyway. This was unfortunate, because I was against the resolution. After this, I started sending out notes to create an alliance of countries from Africa to make sure that a resolution is not passed that will be of detriment to Africa again. Whoo, politics!
That's all for now,
Elyse
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