Harvard WorldMUN 2016 - Unforgettable experience in Rome

Opening and Closing ceremony

The opening ceremony certainly included one of the highlights of WorldMUN 2016 in Rome as the Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi was one of the speakers. Being a great rhetorician his speech on the current situation in Europe, emphasizing the value of intercultural competences, was really impressive. Besides there were a couple of more speakers and some musical acts to complete the opening ceremony.

The closing ceremony also had some speakers and more importantly the awards for the delegates and some delegations were given. The highlight obviously was the award of the resolution fellowship for Albert, Fabian and Max with their project Connect.

Sessions

Double Delegate Committee Special Political and Decolonization Committee:

If I were to describe the committee sessions of Harvard Model United Nations 2015 in three words, they would be: professional, competent and challenging. When debating with more than 100 students from top universities worldwide, the standard and content of the discussion is set very high. Even after practising conference procedure in weekly sessions or smaller conferences and preparing my own countries position, it was hard work to hold against other delegate’s argumentation. Sometimes the shear amount of input from highly ambitious students was overwhelming, making it difficult to keep up with the flow of discussion. Especially as part of the double delegate committee SPECPOL , where one delegate takes part in the formal debate and the other delegate sits outside the room managing position papers and writing draft resolutions, it was often impossible to properly coordinated the two parallel debates. Although having limited amount of speaking opportunities, due to the size of the committee, it was a great occasion to practices debating at a high level and becoming more comfortable speaking in front of a critical crowd. While my personal preference still lies in smaller conferences, where the discussions are held in a more relaxed atmosphere, I am overall happy and honoured to have had the opportunity of being part of this conference.

Single Delegate Committee Sustainable Development Goals

World Mun is not only a unique opportunity to be part of amazing social events, it also is one of the best ways to celebrate the main idea of MUNs: Challenging debates, merging ideas from different countries and give your best in finding solutions that could possibly make an impact to the topics. At World Mun, committees are somewhat different to most conference one has seen before. They’re bigger, most of them with double delegates and full of people striving to the very best. For us, the committees have been a great time, expressing our ideas and getting to know our fellow friends from other countries. We proudly represented Saudi Arabia and look back to a very special time in Rome.

The Pope

On March 17 of 2016, all delegations had the opportunity to witness the Pope and listen to a speech given by him. The speech was held at the Vatican City, in the Paul VI Audience Hall, a huge building with a seating capacity of 6,300. After the speech followed a parade through the city of Rome, in which we went through one of the busiest streets of Rome, La Via del Corso; then proceeded to walk past the monument of Vittorio Emanuele II, the Roman Forum and finally arrived at the Colosseum. During the whole process each delegate waved their flag proudly and cheered loudly.

Socials

One of the most expected parts of the conference were the social events, where we got to meet our fellowed delegates in a more relaxed atmosphere. It was also a place where we could find out a little bit more about each others culture. In the global village, for example, we could taste the food and drinks from so many different countries and in the cabaret night everyone could delight ourselves with the dance moves from all over the world. The atmosphere was amazing and we could feel the excitement all night long, we were just a little sad at the farewell party, as we knew it was te last night with this amazing team. However it was the perfect end to our - one in a kind- adventure.