Putting the UN in Understanding

It’s 3 a.m. A phone is ringing in a shabby hotel in New York City. On the other end of the line, a woman waits to announce the assassination of a world leader. A high school sophomore answers the phone. Is this a new terror-inducing political ad? A justification for age restrictions on attaining public office? No, just another midnight session at Columbia University Model United Nations Conference and expo, a Columbia-hosted high school Model United Nations conference. It is just one out of hundreds of conferences worldwide that foster international understanding and train a generation of diplomats and politicians to face the increasingly global problems of this century.

For those unfamiliar with Model UN (affectionately called MUN), the activity requires participating students to simulate meetings of international and national governing bodies. This gives students the opportunity to debate and propose their own solutions to some of the world’s most pressing issues. Through smaller, more specialized committees (the Paris Peace Conference and the Ad Hoc Committee on Bioterrorism were examples at CMUNCE this year), student delegates are also confronted with urgent crises that they must resolve in real time, creating scenarios where the results of their actions are immediately apparent. In doing so, they leave the realm of wonkish policy debate and are forced to deal with the same moral conflicts and intractable situations that world leaders confront.

I have been part of CMUNCE each of my four years here and have never ceased to be amazed at the incredible energy and creativity that Columbia students have poured into the conference. This year alone, more than 75 undergrads filtered onto campus the week before spring semester to play host to nearly 400 high schoolers. Enthusiastically, and often sleeplessly, they guided delegates through complex simulations of topics ranging from global hunger to China’s political struggles in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution. And the delegates responded in kind, throwing themselves into their assigned roles and working to solve these political, economic, and humanitarian issues.

MUN is by no means a perfect tool for promoting international understanding, but it remains a powerful one, particularly when wielded effectively. Perhaps like the United Nations itself, however, it has definite structural weaknesses. The stated goal of simulating cooperative diplomacy is sometimes marred by the competition for awards and extra lines on college résumés. Committees can lose their educational value when crisis scenarios are inspired solely by Tom Clancy-like nightmares, without an accompanying point in mind. Supersized committees and restrictive rules of parliamentary procedure, which are dominant in many conferences, stifle debate, causing principled policy positions to be replaced by a desperate struggle to be heard at all.

Some of these difficulties are real-world problems, as any realist would point out. The United Nations is huge and clumsy, with arcane rules and ineffective bureaucracy. Countries too often look solely to their own self-interest, and international agreements become nothing more than an inconsequential mound of paperwork. Indeed, today the international order that inspired MUN in the first place appears to be crumbling. This won’t change without a radical shift in global ideals and understanding.

Yet that is precisely why conferences like CMUNCE give me hope. Though our small size limits our reach, we still attract schools from across the U.S. and the Americas at large. This year, a Honduran high school made the journey to Morningside to participate. Students of diverse backgrounds and conflicting opinions come to CMUNCE to discuss the great issues of our time, and often with an idealism that would make President Obama sound like a cynic. The debate is not always conflict-free, and sometimes emotions from real-world conflicts spill into the committee rooms, particularly with the crisis in Gaza that continued to unfold during the conference. Even these minor clashes, however, can make evident to students the need for discussion, tact, understanding, and all those assorted diplomatic skills that the relentless optimist in me hopes can bring peace in our age.

The challenges of today and tomorrow are global and require global solutions. From halting the scourge of sectarian conflict to stemming the rising tide of climate change, the next generation of leaders—our generation and that of the children who will have only grown up in this millennium—needs to understand the politics of cooperation and mutual interest more than ever. It may be unrealistic to expect that a conference like CMUNCE could inspire a teenager to make a straight arrow for the glamorous world of international diplomacy, but I still hold out hope. If that 3 a.m. phone call or a stirring debate on genocide in Darfur can help shape a more cognizant global citizen, then perhaps we’ve played our small part, and had an exhilarating time in the get-go.

The author is a Columbia College senior majoring in East Asian Languages and Cultures. He is the CMUNCE under-secretary general for crises.