Our school participated in the RCIMUN (Robert College Model United Nations) conference on April 15-18, 2009. There were six participants from our school, namely Büşra Karasu (L2 TMA) as a representative in the Special Conference, Gizel İşlemecioğlu (L3 Fen) in the Environment Committee, Burak Yılmaz (L3 TMA) in the Political Committee, Talia Işıtman (L2 Fen) in the Human Rights Committee, Bahar Oğuzertem (L1-C) in the Disarmament Committee as delegates from Finland, and Yasemin Teselya (L2 TMA) as a photographer from the press.

We spent four days with more than 600 high-schoolers from all over the world who were interested in dealing with the world issues. Along with others, we all tried to find solutions to the problems that our planet Earth faces. This year’s theme was “World Resources: An Incitement to Conflict” simulating the procedures that take place in the United Nations (UN).

The members of each committee discussed the four problems assigned to them before the conference and showed an effort to find short & long term solutions to those problems. Chairs helped us understand certain topics more clearly. The countries that shared similar point of views wrote common resolution papers. Many clauses were merged as they were reformulated. As we dealt with the four problems in each of our committees, we felt like we were the real delegates of Finland. We tried to answer the questions in detail as we wrote the resolutions, and the advisers did the final check on the resolution papers. Only the accepted resolution papers on each topic were debated in the General Assembly (GA) along with other committees’ resolution.

Conference activities were reported in the daily newsletter prepared by the press members of the conference. The participants had a chance to socialize during the tea break and luncheons. The boat trip along the Bosphorus was a good motivation for the next day’s work.

It took us several months to get prepared for the conference but the friendly gathering with people of our age coming from different parts of the world on the beautiful campus of Robert College helped us forget about our fatigue. We were all proud of being able to represent our school for the first time in an international conference of this size. We thank our adviser Ms. Sema Topak for her continuous help, support and patience.

I invite you to scroll through the photos below, showing our experience reflecting the times we spent at RC. We are looking forward to the next MUN conference!

Article written by: Bahar Oğuzertem L1-C 431