Model UN, Days 3-4 - 3/19 and 3/20/10

The meeting sessions on Friday were not nearly as fun or intense as Thursday's, but I still enjoyed myself and was able to contribute a bit to the debate. After the working papers were drafted, the delegates battled back and forth in moderated caucus to extol their production and denounce others. It was a bit vicious, but it gave me a great perspective of how United Nations actually works and how difficult it must be to pass resolutions. Most people picked on little things like grammar and meaning, but those who had written the working paper pledged to edit it and make it perfect. Working papers bounced back and forth and to be honest, it was rather confusing. I decided to lay low for the most part, and let the countries with larger sway work to fix what had been written and merge with other working papers and ideas. It made me happy to see papers merging together, because it showed collaboration and solidarity in the resolution for odious debt and its effects. I hope next year I will have gained more skills in Model United Nations and will be able to be a stronger advocate for a paper. However, I did speak the following quote, which I felt was very important and needed to be reiterated:

• debates over whether or not a debt is odious absolutely CAN NOT be resolved solely by a debtor or a creditor state, for fear of bias or false claims, but instead by a third-party that is not involved in any way with the contraction of the debt, and has no prior dispositions.

After I stated my piece, I waited until ideas condensed and resolutions passed. The working paper I supported, 1.3, transformed into resolution 1.1. Another working paper passed and became 1.2, and now these two things were our responsibility to debate. I was vehemently opposed to 1.2, as it gave too much power to creditor nations and completely disregarded the desire of smaller debtor nations like Macedonia.

I actually became very irked while listening to the rhetoric of the delegation of the USA, which firmly supported resolution 1.2. I listened to the delegate speak of propositions that were completely unethical and wrong. So I was forced to consider the ethical implications of my decisions; not only would it be terrible to agree with the resolution, but following the US blindly, like so many other nations did simply because it was a superpower, would demonstrate severe ignorance on my part. In response, I decided to construct a diatribe against their opinions and claims:

• The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia would like to know why it is necessary for a debtor nation to repay at least some of their debt after it has been declared odious. This seems to be a total delusion, as it defeats the purpose of defining a debt as odious in the first place. Nations, if they have indeed contracted what is defined as odious debt, should only be forced to repay parts of it if they are economically stable and wish to do so. It is a matter of national sovereignty. The USA also seems to have tainted ideas about national sovereignty, as it claims loan sanctions to be something that should only be enacted if desired by the state, while it believes that transparency should be enforced. Finally, FYR Macedonia would like to denounce the notion of debtor nations having no say in the declaration of odious debt. Macedonia does agree that debtor nations may declare all debts to be odious, but is it not inversely true that creditor nations may indefinitely laugh at the thought of any debts being odious? This echoes the need for an unbiased third party to resolve such matters.

Then we worked on amendments to the resolutions. By this point, everyone seemed to have forgotten about 1.2 and was only focused on fine-tuning resolution 1.1. to make it perfect. I was happy that my hard work and collaboration with others had met such success. I was confused by the amendments, so I had very little to do with them, and decided to let things happen on their own. It then came to the committee vote, in which resolution 1.1 passed, and 1.2 failed. I was so pleased by the success, and all of my commitment and perseverance had really paid off. And when put to the test in the plenary session today, it passed once again. I was so pleased that my endeavor and collaboration had actually been effective, and I can't wait to return even more powerful next year.