Model UN, Day 2 - 3/18/10

Today, the two committee sessions were a lot more intense than the brief one we had last night. Everyone was ready to go, sharing ideas with great zeal as they had become more comfortable with the rules, the room, and their fellow delegates. I felt a lot more confident in my abilities as well, having conquered public speech last night. I definitely felt that I had improved in understanding the ideas thrown about in committee, creating inferences, and then making a speech. However, I did realize that one area for growth was that I needed to formulate more of my own ideas, instead of recycling and enhancing those of others.

We resumed debate in committee session over issues to be addressed in the working papers for a resolution on odious debt. From doing the research from the position paper, Amy and I knew that FYR Macedonia was mostly a debtor state and that had also incurred odious debt from the former Yugoslavia. We deduced a vague outline of key points that we wanted to be included in the resolution, which is as follows:

• Definition: supports the Sack doctrine of 1927, but would like to expand it to include regime successions, and would be interested in exploring the effect of transparency on the capacity of loans
• Proposal: a third-party organization in which debtor nations and creditor nations collaborate to determine whether or not a debt is odious
• Resolution: if a debt is declared odious, the debtor nation should repay as much as possible without damaging their nations economic infrastructure
• Prevention: the third-party resolution could work on promoting transparency, and perhaps be given the power to discourage loans when thought to be malignant.

We mentioned our ideas during a moderated caucus and waited to hear what others had to say so that we could possibly make some alliances and get a working paper going. I will mention now that we did support working paper endeavors, but never actively participated in writing them due to our novice status. We did, however, observe and gain skills that we hope to put to use at next year's conference.

During an unmoderated caucus, we joined with the plans of Algeria and Argentina, who at first seemed to have very similar ideas to ourselves. We liked the ideas they had to offer, but soon realized that they were not very receptive to any sort of collaboration and that they were very set in their ways. For instance, we approached them with our feelings on transparency, and the promptly rejected our ideas in a rather insolent manner. Amy and I felt that it was ethically wrong to renounce the importance of transparency, as creditor states should always know who they are loaning to before the transaction is completed. Even if this diminishes the number of loans, it can be detrimental in the accumulation of odious debt if left otherwise unattended.

Therefore, at the next unmoderated caucus, we decided to ally with Mexico and Mauritania, who were the head honchos of an increasingly large group of mostly poorer debtor states like ourselves. We liked what they had to say, and they were very receptive to our ideas and happy to work collaboratively with us and our plans. I demonstrated my support of their ideas and the integration of mine in the following speech in a moderated caucus:

• The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia strongly encourages smaller states like ourselves to support the plan laid out by Mexico, Mauritania, Ecuador, and Italy. This plan takes regime succession into account in a broad definition of odious debt, and seeks solutions that are case-to-case. It also encourages loan sanctions as a means of preventing odious debt from being incurred. FYR Macedonia also finds it ridiculous that only creditors should solve the issue of odious debt, for if debtor nations have incurred an odious debt, it is because of a FORMER corrupt regime.

So after my speech, moderated caucuses continued. I spoke a total of four times during these two committee sessions, and I was proud of my contribution even if it wasn't too great. I need to continue to work on developing more of my own ideas, and next year, now that I know what I'm doing, I'll come back ready to debate and write position papers.

During the next unmoderated caucus, Amy and I sought sponsors and signatories for our working paper. We presented the key points, which follow:

• definition of odious debt, including a revision to add regime change in the case of corruption, because this as well is incurred against the will of the people;
• committee to discuss the legitimacy of loans;
• a third-party organization that is not involved with the contraction of the debt, must not be the debtors and creditors that were involved;
• if a debt is determined to be odious, the amount that is cancelled will be decided case-to-case
• disaster debt should NOT be included as odious debt.

Our campaign was rather successful, and our working paper passed. Another four were passed that we did not contribute to, and so ended the committee sessions for today. Tomorrow we will discuss them, debate them, fix them, draft resolutions, make amendments, and finally vote.