Competing In England
By Chris Pang
On March 2, 2000, four other senior high school students and myself arrived in the historic city of Bath, England to compete at the Bath Schools' Model United Nations to be held that weekend. With well over 400 students from Germany, France, Ireland, the United States, and Great Britain, the experience was, without question, a rewarding one indeed.
When the conference commenced on Friday, the shear size of my committee (United Nations Commission on Human Rights) initially amazed me. Over 100 delegates flooded the conference theatre that night, and it was then that I began to take notice of the great differences between the North American and British style and format of MUN in the areas of resolution-writing, procedure, evaluation, and the overall emphasis of debate.
Resolution-Writing:
The British system calls upon delegates to pre-formulate resolutions on each of the agenda topics which are to be brought to a two-hour lobbying session. Traditionally, we in Canada emphasize the importance of creating working papers, which later get accepted as resolutions. In contrast, the BSMUN uses an "approval panel", which selects one resolution from the group of those submitted to be debated during the committee session. Consequently, this method prevents a majority vote as to whether the resolution should be debated or not, thus, leaving delegates to merely amend the paper.
However, with such a time constraint (UNCHR- one hour maximum per topic), a great number of nations do not get to voice their opinions nor amend their ideas. This ultimately led to failure of all but one resolution during the entire weekend. To sum up, the emphasis appeared to be more on a delegation's ability to create a resolution or amend one, and less on debating the issue. Lobbying was eradicated after the initial lobbying session on Friday. No more than five nations were given the chance to amend per topic.
Procedure:
Unlike the North American system, the British do not include the items of formal and informal debate. Instead, debate revolves around a structured system of amending which calls forth delegates to propose, advocate, debate, then vote on the amendment.
Within the above format are procedures called "time for" and "time against", where all delegates are encouraged to voice their policies on the amendment. In contrast, lobbying is abolished during the actual committee sessions as it is left entirely to Friday's two-hour session. Most unusual, is the absence of speakers' list, which functions as an effective method in delegating the order and consistency of speaking. Instead, power is left entirely to the chair who possesses discretion as to who might amend or speak.
Evaluation:
The British system of debate uses staff advisors as an integral part in determining each committee's winners. The downside in this is that advisors cannot be relied upon to evaluate delegates since their own students are competing in committees. In Canada, evaluations are strictly left to the chair's who is closer to the issues and hopefully impartial from the beginning of debate. Although amending is said to be a significant criterion, the fact remains that each nation is only given a maximum of two chances to do so.
Ed's note: Chris acted as Under-Secretary General at last year's INMUN and has been given the honour of taking over from Mary Velpel as next year's INMUN Secretary-General. Chris has capably served in the role of Secretary-General at each of the three one-day local high school MUN's that our regional leadership pool has successfully run this year.