Freedom’s World Affairs Club recently participated in the Model United Nations (U.N.) held at the University of Pittsburgh on Nov. 8. According to club sponsor Ms. Katie Gigl, this is Freedom’s first time participating in this event.
The Model U.N. is an annual event where schools from surrounding districts gather and hold a fake U.N. hearing. Each school is given a different country to represent in this hearing, and Freedom students represented the country of Morocco.
“To my knowledge, I don’t think [Freedom has] ever participated in a Model U.N. recently. The purpose of the World Affairs Club is to talk about global issues and be more globally-minded citizens, so I felt like Model U.N. would give the kids a chance to embrace that,” Gigl said.
In the actual U.N., these countries have different councils and organizations they represent. Freedom spoke for six different councils as Morocco. Some of which include: the United Nations Advance Security Council, the United Nations Security Council, GA-1 Disarmament and International Security, the United Nations Environmental Program, the World Health Organization as well as the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. The club split up into groups of two and each group was given a different organization to represent.
After students were assigned a group and council to represent, they then had to present different resolutions for their specific issues, much like what a real U.N. committee would do.
Junior Ryan Kaufman was in the Cyber Security Council, and he said it was “very enlightening.”
“[The experience was] a little frustrating because we went as a small country,” Kaufman said. “Our opinions didn’t matter as much as ‘The Big Five.’”
The Big Five countries are the five powers in the U.N. These include China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and The United States of America. Since Freedom was not one of these five powers, they did not have as much say in the decisions the U.N. made.
“I just wanted the kids to feel like they were somewhat prepared, but overall I just wanted them to have a good time,” Gigl said.