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Model United Nations Projects: Edward Grosek Students of McHenry High School who want to be successful Model United Nations delegates need to know the real United Nations' procedures plus the facts, policies and voting records of the member nations they are representing. McHenry's teachers and counselors who engineer these events must know a myriad of ways to prepare the participating students and what benefits they can expect. Early last fall, McHenry's librarian, who has to compile this information, contacted the Government Publications Department of Founders Memorial Library at Northern Illinois University and arranged for a class day of research at our library. Enthusiasm for Model United Nations is increasing. High school librarians should know what transpires at Model U.N. Assemblies and which books help prepare students and educators for these experiences. Model United Nations Model United Nations are instructive simulations for high school students of the actual United Nations. The participating students are assigned ambassadorial roles of the United Nations' member countries and prepare themselves in the library on international political problems, including refugees, denial of women's rights, regional warfare, economic assistance, and now, after the Cold War, how the United Nations should change. At the Model United Nations meetings, the students form committees and draft resolutions favoring their nations' interest. They negotiate and try to compile a bloc of representatives whose governments are disposed to those interest, they debate the issues and proposals and then, in full General Assembly session, they cast their votes. University students arranged and conducted most of the original Model United Nations -those held during the 20 years following World War II- as academic imitations of the sessions of the General Assembly, the Security Council and the International Court of Justice. They assembled on campuses in Northeastern United States and, in lesser instance, in the Midwest and on the West Coast, debating how Korea could be unified and whether "Mainland" China ought to be admitted into the United Nations. Interest infused American high schools in the 1950s and 1960s, and in the next two decades university students began administering Model United Nations for secondary students as the participant diplomats. In 1995, more than 150 Model United Nations conferences involving more than 60,000 students from sixth grade through graduate school assembled throughout the United States. By the beginning of 1996, 24 Model United Nations chapters had constructed homepages on the Internet. The United Nations Association of the United States of America is the national coordinator of Model United Nations events. Their programs are decentralized, flexible and open to all ambitious students and do not restrict any one of them because of subject major. The conferences vary structurally. Some are comprehensive and duplicate all the United Nations' organs and some of its specialized agencies. Some conferences rename General Assembly committees and even create committees that do not actually exist. Large Model United Nations convene and work for three to five days and include hundreds of students from several schools. Such endeavors usually model the General Assembly and hold other United Nations organ and committee sessions simultaneously. Lesser intra-school versions can involve all or part of one school's student corps. Here, the General Assembly plus one or more organs or committees can be co-convened. Some Model United Nations are conducted within one class, among 15 to 50 students. This smaller size is better for studying and modeling one organ, typically the Security Council. Coexistent with the assemblage and debates of the delegates, there is usually a Model Secretariat, which, with word processors, copiers, staplers, etc., produces documents of the delegates' drafts, resolutions, speeches and decisions. 47 Responsibilities and Rewards Those student delegates who have to caucus, build consensus, draft resolutions and deliberate must study the facts, values, policies, geography and recent history and voting records of the nations that they represent. They have to articulate their represented governments' objectives concerning one or more international issues and be aware of those other nations that have intentions allied to their positions. They learn the procedures of the real United Nations, increase their vocabularies, and handle and read exemplary resolutions and speeches of the General Assembly. The best delegates, the model statesmen, prepare themselves before committee meetings by outlining positions on each issue: their nations' past actions and justification, their nations' current proposals and justification, their opponents' attitudes and justification, and their rebuttals to these opponents. They collaborate in caucus among the representatives of friendly countries and strive to secure their votes with eloquence and persuasion or with compromise and concession. They add their names to the speakers' list, and during session they raise their hands to be recognized by the chairperson. This new learning and role-playing causes students to think critically, use the tools of peaceful change and respect opposing positions. To each individual, it is exciting, prestigious and escapist. After finalizing discussions and closing the proceedings, there routinely is a debriefing between the students and knowledgeable advisors to evaluate the Model United Nations experience and to explain any important inaccuracies, behavior, or omissions that would not have occurred at an actual United Nations Assembly. Library Preparation In order to complete the research needed for effective roles at a Model United Nations, students should use a university library that is a federal publications depository and that has a large collection of current United Nations records and reports. The documents reference librarian is the individual who should work with the students by gathering together authoritative references and indexes and demonstrating how to work with and interpret them. A university depository will have most of the ensuing books, references and indexes; the documents librarian will recognize them easily:
The best federal publications for determining other nations' recent political behavior and foreign policies are:
Background Notes
Choice, easily scanned sources of transnational ideas and issues are:
A Global Agenda: Issues Before the General Assembly of the
United Nations, United Nations Association of the
United States of America.
Agreements, Taylor & Francis, Inc., 1990
The best handbook about the United Nations itself is:
The best indexes for looking up other nations' policies and objectives, their leaders' addresses to the United Nations, their economic, governmental, and commercial statistics, the problems and issues within their cultures, etc. are:
Index to Proceedings of the General Assembly, published
by the U.N. Dag Hammarskjold Library Good sources for the voting records of General Assembly resolutions are: Index to Proceedings of the General Assembly, published by the U.N. Dag Hammarskjold Library 48
Yearbook of the United Nations, U.N. Department of Public Information The best federal books for instructions on the duties and characteristics of a successful delegate are:
Don't Talk, Communicate, U.S. Department of Defense, 1980
The best handbook on how to establish and operate a Model United Nations Program is: A Guide to Delegate Preparation, edited by James P. Muldoon. United Nations Association of the United States of America, 485 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10017,1995 The addresses for the most usable Websites of the United Nations itself are: http://www.undcp.org/unlinks.html *Edward Grosek, Assistant Professor and United Nations Documents Librarian, Founders Memorial Library, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb. 49 |Home|
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