Harvard Model United Nations

On 29 June, Poppy, Edith, Kelly, and I were lucky to attend the Harvard Model United Nations Australia Competition at Cranbrook School. Over the four-day experience, we discussed numerous pressing world issues in our respective committees, collaborating with other students to create nuanced ideas that would assist in solving these issues. As a representative for Morocco in the Disarmament and International Security Committee, I was involved in discussions about how to deal with terrorism in the digital age and the increased use of online sites to coordinate and finance terrorist attacks, as well as recruiting new members through terrorist propaganda. In this committee, we placed particular emphasis on reducing the potential for young, vulnerable individuals to be exposed to such propaganda in our proposed solution.

On the first day of the competition, we formed alliances with different countries through our mutual goals and participated in impromptu public speaking, mimicking the activities of the real United Nations. And after this, on the second day of the competition, we began to form bigger alliances, called blocks, to start creating resolutions that communicated our proposed solutions. In my block, I worked alongside countries like Mexico, Algeria and Sweden to propose a United Nations body that would monitor online sites for terrorist propaganda, using computer algorithms and artificial intelligence. Through a presentation and Q&A about our resolution, on the third day, we were able to ally with another block to create an ultimate solution that combined both surveillance by a neutral United Nations body and education of youth populations. The committee then voted on which resolution they wanted to pass, again mirroring the practices of the United Nations, and our block was lucky enough to have our resolution pass with a majority vote.

Through this experience, we continued to enhance our communication, collaboration, and public speaking skills, attempting to solve real-world issues through our discussions and ideas. This was an amazing opportunity that allowed us to enter the realm of international collaboration as a United Nations delegate, exploring a potential career path by immersing ourselves in this environment. It was wonderful to collaborate with other students and communicate our ideas in a competition focused on inspiring the next generation of change-makers.

Eve Ardagna
Year 11

From 29 May to 2 June, four Santa Sabina students attended the Harvard Model United Nations held at Cranbrook School. This experience required each individual to represent a country in a different committee of the UN, where we represented Egypt in SPECPOL and the WHO and Morocco in World Bank and DISEC. The program aimed to facilitate conversation and debate between countries on various issues such as UN Peacekeeping and the legalisation of drugs. We were tasked by the end of the program to create BLOCS with countries that share similar views and ideologies. With our blocks, we needed to create a resolution about what we thought were the main issues in regards to the overarching issue. These resolutions were discussed, amended and then put into action in the committee if they passed. Overall, this experience was extremely insightful allowing us to get a taste of how the United Nations operates today, allowing us to broaden our scope of global politics.

Kelly Ghali
Year 12