THE DELEGATE 2022

ISSUE 4

EDITOR’S NOTE:

I say with a deep sadness, that unfortunately this is our last edition. The Press Team have worked very hard to produce all the editions for RRSIMUN conference. We have had some amazing contributions from Colegio Ayalde, George Coșbuc, V.Komarov School and Hitachi First High School. We are extremely grateful for Inés Chapa producing artwork for our front covers and Alexandra Gidoiu producing reports and articles. Our Home team consisted of myself and Ella Burrows as Heads of the Press Team, Tahnee Dione, as journalist and Jaishan Jethwa as Photographer, who has also been working hard with the Secretariat Team as Deputy Head. Our wonderful advisor Mr G Moseley, who has been guiding us to produce ‘The Delegate’ , and giving wonderful ideas as well Ms O Sava, who have been proof reading and editing each edition, both have been a great support. The IT team have also been a great help, aiding us in all the technical issues that producing a magazine may bring. On another note, in today’s edition we have article written by Tahnee on how delegations learn to cooperate with each and an interview with Mandy Tanner, the first Russellian member of ICJ in The Hague alongside others. Finally, we have galleries of our favourite moments of this conference. We hope you have enjoyed your time at this conference and hope to see you next year!

CONTRIBUTIONS:

Heads of Press

Sam Alfred Ella Burrows Designer

Sam Alfred Editors

Mr G Moseley

Ms O Sava

Photographer

Jaishan Jethwa Journalist

Tahnee Dione

Contributions

Henry Steele President of Security Council

Mr M Tanner

Mr G Moseley

Inés Chapa from Colegio Ayalde, Spain

Kwasaki Yui and Saito Koki from Hitachi First High School, Japan

Davit Togoevi, Lizi Chkheidze, Ivane Kuljanishvili, Lizi Arkania, Sandro Sartania, Keso Petriashvili from V.Komarov School in Tbilisi, Georgia

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Artist

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Alexandra Gidoiu from George Coșbuc in Bucharest, Romania

Dora Liu

Inés Chapa from Colegio Ayalde, Spain

The UN – forming agreements, forming alliances, and ending disputes

In modern day, the world is conflicted on seemingly every topic, ranging in seriousness from pineapple on pizza to the next world leader. With the increase in social media allowing for the spread of both false and genuine news and providing the ability to showcase any opinion on any topic to the whole world, conflict and disagreement runs rampant in the modern world.

In this environment, it becomes ever increasingly important that we, as a society, form methods and organisations so that we can find solutions to our problems. The United Nations has, over the years, helped to cease many conflicts through the Security Council in countries all over the globe including Cambodia, El Salvador, Guatemala and Tajikistan.

In the past, large groups of people have greatly disagreed over significant problems, whether it be because of their opposing political, religious, cultural or philosophical views, leading to even more substantial problems. For example, the English civil war between parliamentarians and royalists, using violence in order to designate control systems and settle a political dispute or the many conflicts between Catholics and Protestants during the sixteenth and seventeenth century, again using violence to settle disputes.

When humanity refuses to sensibly and respectfully come to agreements, violence, hatred and ignorance erupts. False and genuine news is spread and suddenly, those who know nothing about one another begin to act aggressively or shy away from each other instead of actively pursuing and engaging in discussions about compromise, common ground and positive differences.

The UN is committed to maintaining international peace and security, developing friendly relations among nations and promoting social progress, better living standards and human rights through negotiation between disputing countries without the use of violence. This in turn, leads to peaceful solutions to significant conflicts and forms strong bonds between countries. When humanity uses the resources, we have and choose to use methods of peace and verbal reasoning to our advantage, great leaps can be made to better our society. For example, providing all people with the rights they deserve by forming and signing the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” or having conversations and discussions about the appropriate ways to treat children during the “Convention on the Rights of the Child.”

However, one of the greatest dilemmas of the workings of the United Nations Security Council is the right to veto of the five permanent members: The USA, The UK, The Russian Federation, France and China. Veto power has been used 278 times to date, often by Russia. Through the excessive use of this privilege, patterns have emerged. Most often, veto powers are used in cases of resolutions condemning mass violence or genocide in a country in order to protect their own and their allies’ interests. Examples of this gross abuse of power include Russia and China: using it to reject any resolutions against the Syrian regime and The US using it to protect Israel from the condemnation of its armed actions in the Gaza Strip.

Though no resolutions have yet been suggested, the UN has successfully formed both agreements and alliances that have been extremely important for our world. This includes but is not limited to the “World Summit on Sustainable Development,” the many “Earth Summits,” and the ever-increasing amount of discussions and treaties involving human rights. “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.” Helen Keller

Interview – first judge in The Hague ICJ

Mandy was Sec Gen in 2004 and Head Girl 2004/2005. She was the first student from RRS to be selected as a Judge in The Hague ICJ with Mr Stern who is here at our conference again this year. She is now a Family Barrister at Gray's Inn, London.

What was it like being part of ICJ in The Hague?

It was an absolute privilege to be selected for the ICJ in the Hague. I always understood it to be the gold standard of what one could undertake whilst doing MUN and I felt incredibly lucky to be chosen.

How did your MUN experience help you in your career?

MUN has shaped my career entirely. Being a barrister, public speaking is an essential skill, but it can be a scary one to develop without a lot of practice. MUN gave me that opportunity.

Why did you decide to take part in MUN?

My dad made me! Then wouldn’t allow me to quit when I found the whole thing too scary!

What about MUN inspired you?

There were always incredible people in the years above making amazing speeches. It pushed me on because I wanted to be as good as them.

ICJ Result

Judges of the ICJ have been deliberating a border dispute between Equatorial Guinea and Gabon involving islands. In a straw poll vote prior to serious study the vote was 9 8. After very careful study of the facts, laws and presentations by the advocates, however, the final ruling was 17-0 against Gabon who had mistranslations and many other inaccuracies in their case. Congratulations to all participants on a very thorough assessment of the evidence.

World Events during RRIMUN 40

2010 Haiti Earthquake: Deadliest Disaster in the History of UN Peacekeeping a magnitude 7 earthquake hits Haiti, killing 300,000 people and devastating the country the deadliest disaster in the history of UN peacekeeping operations, killing 101 members of the UN family.

2010 UN women General Assembly creates UN women the United Nations entity for gender equality and the empowerment of women.

2010 LGBTQ+ rights global appeal to decriminalize homosexuality and for other measures to safeguard the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.

2010 - UNICRI opened the “centre on policies to counter the appeal of terrorism” centre established a searchable database containing information about different projects, programmes and policies pursued by Governments to counter the appeal of terrorism.

2015- Global Counterterrorism Forum

2016 - General plan of action to prevent violent extremismhugely influential document calls for national, regional and local plans of actions to prevent violent extremism.

The fight for a choice

It is a wonder how much world views can differ from one continent to another, but it seems that despite those differences there is one view that some nations share, which is that women shouldn’t have a choice. This year has been a great example of this, having the French Election and current Iran protests either denying women the right to wear a hijab, or forcing them to wear one.

This April the French presidential election between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen was held. Though Macron was re-elected with 58.5% of votes, Le Pen still had 41.5% voters which agreed with her ideas, such as banning the wearing of hijabs in public. This statistic is really eye opening and shows the prejudice and racism still present in our society. Le Pen claims that 85 percent of the French population wish to not see Hijabis in public, whose headscarves are a “demonstration of fundamental Islam”.

Iran’s government wishes for the exact opposite, leading to tragic consequences. After the death of Masha Amini in September, who had been arrested for allegedly violating the strict rules which require women to cover their hair, an uproar was caused in Iran, with women cutting their hair in public or setting headscarves on fire, demanding “Woman, life, freedom” and, ultimately, the choice to express themselves in public in whichever way they want to, whether that is by choosing to cover their hair or not. Authorities are not responding to the aforementioned protests, trying to end them by using force; but what makes this current situation different is the range of people protesting. Iranians of all ages and from many different backgrounds are gathering, feeling like Amini’s death upon being arrested was not a coincidence, after photos of her in a coma with bruising on her face resurfaced online.

These events start to pose the question of how many more deaths people have to endure until governments listen to what their people want and let them express their faith without prejudice. Let us hope that the coming together of the Iranian people will be more successful than in the past.

Committed Committees

SPECPOL 2

SPECPOL 2 consisted of countless delegates, eager to participate in fruitful debate. What was very impressive was that how these delegates managed to capture a perfect balance between serious debate and having fun, and we are glad as chairs of SPECPOL 2 that we were able to maintain and deliver such an atmosphere. There was interesting debate on Jerusalem, of which the POI’s I cannot imagine Israel enjoyed. As diplomats, SPECPOL 2 reached quite diplomatic solutions with amendments that made the resolutions suitable for all member states, most notably opening a theme park called “the Peace Park” in Jerusalem to ensure peace between all nations.

All jokes aside, it was a pleasure chairing for SPECPOL 2 and to be surrounded by such colourful delegates to share laughs with. It has been very memorable Written by Efe Akin

SCC

Overall, the SCC was extremely enjoyable, and we were able to tackle several different topics in the allocated time. We were able to pass 7 resolutions out of the 7 we debated with a passed resolution for each sub topic. We are also extremely proud to have had a 98% participation rate with there never being a moment where no delegates wanted to speak. We are grateful for all the delegates of the Special Committee on COVID-19 and wish you everyone a wonderful General Assembly!

Written by Alexander Fial

DISEC2

Chairing DISEC 2 was a pretty fun ride, after being a delegate last year it’s a pretty major change in pace, being the ones enforcing and setting the rules can be pretty fun, as well as making sure there is a good balance between serious debate and some fun. I found all of the topics very interesting and listening to the debate from a neutral point of view brings a different perspective to these conferences. As well having co chairs was a big help because it helped with work and it gave me people I could gossip too, overall it was a lot of fun and I hope I can do it again

Written by Vincent Lombardi

CRISIS Committee - Report

On Sunday afternoon, an emergent CRISIS committee was announced, with the purpose of resolving the rapidly deteriorating conflict between Israel and Lebanon over the Qana and Karish gas fields. This dispute started in 2010, when it was discovered that massive deposits off the Israeli coast might stretch into Lebanese territory. Since then, Israeli-Lebanese negotiations have been going on about maritime borders, but these discussions have quickly elevated into conflict, with Israel being under current drone attack and ready to invade Lebanon. Other countries such as Iran, the USA, the UAE, Turkey, and Egypt have started to take sides and there is even an imminent threat of nuclear weapons. As it seems the situation has gone out of control, let us look over the CRISIS committee’s efforts to solve it

Firstly, it is important to keep in mind that Lebanon is facing an economic crisis, with the risk of becoming one of the most severe crises since the mid 19th century and secondly, Israel is facing a crisis of its own, with four Knesset snap elections taking place in the last 2 years and a fifth one to happen this November. The stakes are high and as Israel and Lebanon have always been at conflict, so what could be done in this committee to resolve decades’ worth of tension?

• The suggestion to implement a demilitarized zone along the border between the two countries was widely accepted; this way, a bigger conflict could be prevented from happening and the goal of this committee, namely peace, could be achieved much easily

• Another implementation would be that of a ceasefire, to further promote diplomatic and peaceful negotiations, beneficial to both nations. Along the lines of this idea, there was also discussion about sanctioning countries, though that proved to be a violation of human rights, since sanctioning Lebanon, that is already facing a crisis, would just harm the people.

• In the interest of stopping full blown war from happening, holy sites will be better protected and those who do not adhere by this will be faced with financial and military sanctions

• A new committee with the purpose of distributing gas equally will also be created, making sure that both Israel and Lebanon are profiting off of these fields. This committee will promote a result helpful to both nations, that eliminates the need for a new border

• Although the proposed mediator was Egypt, concerns were raised that Egypt would not be an unbiased mediator, seeing as there was a conflict between it and Israel in the past and the Egyptian people are anti Israel. Consequently, an amendment passed to have Turkey mediate, since it seemed like the better choice.

One of the more memorable moments of the CRISIS was the delegate of Israel’s objection to a resolution designed to aid Israel. Much to the shock of the committee, the delegate was very ardent in his denial, something the everyone got a laugh out of Overall, this committee reached its goal in a very lively manner, with all member states dedicated to the solving of its issue in innovative ways, demonstrating an amazing spirit of collaboration and promoting the UN values.

Catering Team Security IT Team Security Council Presidents Cleaning Team Committee Chairs Disco Team Mr Bob Stern ICJ Ms Calvet Delegates Mrs Tanner Media Team Officers Advisors Secretary General GA Presidents Royal Russell Staff Team Approval Panel Royal Russell Estates Team Press Team Secretariat ICJ Judges