June 2016, the United Nation Commissions on refugees announced that at the end of 2014, there was about 59.4 refugees in the world, the highest number ever recorded. Where most of these refugees are coming from? There are several countries where people are escaping war and persecution but Syria has the largest number of refugees. Our job was to have a two day stimulation on United Nations, where us students represented countries involved with this crisis in order to provide a solution specifically on the Syrian refugee crisis. My assigned country was Greece and I was place in committee #6( there was 6 committees).Essential questions we learned by the end of the project where
why the Syrian Refugee Crisis is happening,
how the world is responding to it
what we can learn from refugee crises in the past
who the “United Nations” is and what they do
What my country is all about
My assigned country was Greece, which islocated at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Situated on the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula, it shares land borders with Albania to the northwest, the Republic of Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to the northeast. Their government type is a parliamentary system, parliamentary republic and constitutional republic. The thing about Greece's involvement with the refugee crisis is that its mostly forced. There are hundreds and thousands of refugees arriving to the shores of Greece daily , from an unsafe boat rides many take in order to seek asylum in Europe. They then arrive into the refugee camps that are severely overcrowded and in dangerous conditions. Due to Greece's horrible economy and well known debt they are poor and unable to care for so many refugee's. They have been receiving funding from countries around EU , however they have fumbled to a great amount of this donation and failed to put it to good use. Greece's wishes that more countries will help them with the refugee's in effective ways and are willing to help end this crisis, as it would benefit their situational and many others.
This was very useful because it really helped me really understand the financial crisis Greece is in. I found it through google searching about they're financial status. The most interesting piece of information I learned from this article was the very specific statistics it offered. And more importantly how bad they're status is financially and HOW it got be. It overall was an article I kept referring to throughout the project and helped me have a better understanding of such an important part of Greece that affected the crisis.
All delegates were required to write a position paper, basically writing about how their country is involved with the Syrian Refugee crisis and what solutions they believe will end the atrocity, including specifically what they're country can contribute. A piece of critique that really helped me improve the final result of my paper was "Adding more statistics to back up claims", given to me by my friend Victoria. This was a small comment but really had me go back to my paper and add numbers to what I wanted to prove. This helped my points become more impactful and credible , which overall had my position paper sounding more professional and strong. Another critique that had me create a better piece was from my dad recommending me to rethink my solution in more depth. This was a major piece of advice that really made my position paper better, and even helping me in the conference. I went back and the more I thought about my solution, the more I realized it would not work and thought of a whole new way to solve the crisis. This solution later became what I'm most proud of my paper because it was thought out and actually was the solution that my committee voted on in the actual MUN conference.
Opening speeches were the first thing every country had to share. It determined allies, enemies and who's building of of who. It was a big deal so I made sure mine was well written. It took me a few tries before I was happy with it. I had to make simple changes like rewriting sentences to make them flow more, and even shorten in a ton because it was way to long, wordy and hard to follow the first time I wrote it. Im glad my sister told me it was confusing to follow because if not, I would not have made as many changes that needed to happen in order for the delegates in my committee to follow my speech. She also mentioned it was way to long, something I made sure to go back and fix, cutting facts and opinions that were to specific. Now that I have finished MUN, going back I would have made my opening speech even MORE short. This is because so many speeches are happening, and I understand it was hard to follow really long speeches. Being more short and to the point was the exact point of this speech and I probably went in to much detail of unnecessary things. Also I wouldn't have given as many of my solutions and plans in my opening speech, as it gives away to much and is not strategic.
What the conference was all about and golden moments!
The conference was definitely a roller coaster in the way that it had major up's and major down's. Personally, I am really proud of what information I contributed to the conference , how many times I spoke up, and that I challenged and had many other delegates thinking about what should happen. Im proud of my committee in the sense that there was a lot of overall contribution throughout the class. There was times where it was quiet and countries were looking around anxiously thinking "who's going to talk?" ,"should I say something", "I have something to say, but i'm to scared". But little by little the walls came down and countries gained the confidence to speak and share important views and information that we needed in order to solve such a complex war going on. If I could do anything different in my committee I think I would challenge the data and and statistics some countries mentioned. Next year, in order to better prepare the students I would encourage teachers to give students more time to research. The more research the better informed the students are and more advanced the conversations in the conference would be. Now a golden moment in the debate was right after all the countries had agreed on the solution to create safe zone's in Syria and had a list of donations on the board, then the leaders of the debate decided things were going to smoothly. They then passed a note to some of the larger countries donating to the camps and had them pull out, creating a brand new solution to throw everybody off. I was frustrated, confused a little angry because our plan made sense and was becoming reality. Countries slowly trickled on the other team and pulled their donations as well. I got with my alliance and we slowly convinced more people why our side was more reasonable. And in the end our side won by the majority vote.