National Model United Nations – Getting a taste of diplomacy
This article was originally published in German. The English version is an automatic translation and may contain errors. The German original is authoritative.
Behind the National Model United Nations project lies the world's largest simulation of a United Nations conference, where young people from all over the world come together to take on the role of diplomats. Every year, over 5,000 participants seize the opportunity to represent one of the 193 UN member states in the various committees and attempt to represent their country's interests as effectively as possible. In doing so, they must be able to adopt both familiar and unfamiliar perspectives and debate global problems and possible solutions together in negotiation-confident English.
The National Model United Nations, or NMUN for short, was established in 1946 with the founding of the United Nations and is considered the successor to an annual simulation exercise of the League of Nations from 1923. The designation National Model United Nations stems from the fact that the project initially took place only at the level of the United States and was therefore nationally oriented. Today, however, one could rather speak of an 'International Model United Nations', as it attracts young people from all over the world to the annual conference in New York. As preparation for this conference at the headquarters of the United Nations, other, smaller conferences in various countries are often attended. The so-called Delegates are initially given the opportunity to discover how conferences at the United Nations generally work. On the one hand, the Rules of Procedure are discussed and internalised; on the other hand, content is debated. The aim is to inform oneself in appropriate language about complex political issues and then exchange views with the other participants. By assuming a particular role, that of a representative of usually a foreign country, an understanding develops for the problems and situations of other peoples and cultures. Furthermore, skills in the areas of rhetoric, negotiation tactics and the fundamentals of diplomacy are discovered and trained. Since a large proportion of those involved do not have English as their mother tongue, consolidating the English language also plays a crucial role. Last but not least, it is necessary to be able to engage with the viewpoints of others in as unbiased a manner as possible. Tolerance and openness are therefore two of the most important attributes in order to do justice to the project.
The project requires participants to engage intensively with their assigned country as well as equally with the work of the United Nations. An understanding of UN statutes and the drafting of UN resolutions is part of the process. To this end, the delegations, which usually consist of ten to twenty students, prepare themselves in different ways.
The delegations of Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg typically take a whole semester for this. In Würzburg, the delegations have always been interdisciplinary groups from a wide variety of degree programmes and semesters. For example, the last delegation consisted not only of students of politics and law, but also of those from other subjects, such as sinology, linguistics, medicine and food chemistry. This diversity within the group provides a promising foundation for training in tolerance and openness. The students of the delegation start each year at the beginning of the winter semester with preparations for the upcoming conferences. During weekly meetings and an intensive phase during the lecture-free period, they research their country and practise writing and delivering speeches. Of particular importance is that the Delegates understand exactly how international politics and the United Nations in particular function. To this end, in addition to intensive preparation in Würzburg, a one-week Study-Week with briefings from high-ranking politicians takes place in Berlin prior to the conference. Dag Hammarskjöld, who served as the third Secretary-General of the United Nations, expressed his opinion regarding the United Nations as follows: "Everything will be all right – you know when? When people, just people, stop thinking of the United Nations as a weird Picasso abstraction and see it as a drawing they made themselves." This quotation is characteristic of the problem with the United Nations. The students attempt to look behind this strange Picasso painting, as Hammarskjöld calls it, and become active themselves in order to gain experience not only in theory but also in practice with regard to the United Nations. Currently, the 2020 delegation of Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg is searching for new interested parties who will embark on this adventure together in the coming winter semester.
Anika Scheffler