MUN Mannheim goes to MaltMUN 2019

by Vincent Orgonas

Arrival

Last September, right at the beginning of the semester, MUN Mannheim for the first time in the history of our society visited MaltMUN in the Maltese capital of Valetta.

For my fellow delegates and me, our trip started at Mannheim central station (way too early) on the 12th of September. From there we took a train to Frankfurt where we boarded our plane to arrive in Malta around noon without any major complications.

After arriving at Valetta and checking into our apartment, we went out for our first trip to explore the city which eventually ended at the store of a German supermarket chain what finally allowed us to cover the breakfast preferences of all delegation members. We spend the evening enjoining the touristic site of the historic Valetta harbour defence facilities while having some drinks outside a small bar. 

Committee

The following day began with the official opening ceremony of MaltMUN 2019 which was held at the Malta Maritime Museum. It featured many interesting guest speakers, also including Malta’s president Mr George Vella.

After meeting the other members of our respective committees for the first time, we embarked on a short boat trip which brought us back to the city-center for an informal lunch break. Once we had covered our needs regarding nutrition, we registered at Malta’s House of Parliament, which served as the venue for most of the committees. 

During the first one and a half days of the conference the DISEC committee Jan and I where part of representing Russia and the USA dealt with the problem of the disarmament of fundamentalist groups in Northern Africa. The debate featured many highly creative ideas which ultimately resulted in a verbal duel between Germany and Russia peaking as the German delegate went for the tactically questionable call to navigate the argument towards the topic of German constitutional law while arguing with an actual German citizen. After finally passing our first resolution, our committee directed its focus towards the issue of responsible use of artificial intelligence in conflict. For most delegates, this really was when the fun began. Our debate featured many heated moderated and unmoderated caucuses, as well as a not so secret American-Russian alliance and many countries only indirectly affected by the topic switching blocks on an occasional basis.

Meanwhile, the UN Security Council dealt with the ongoing crisis in Venezuela. MUN Mannheim was represented by Jana advocating the interests of the great nation of Uganda. Besides being a substantial part of the debate, most notably by vehemently putting emphasis on the topic of national sovereignty, she also managed to become a meme while at the same time cementing her status in committee by using the notorious “Ugandan death stare”.

The ECOFIN committee spent its time during the conference on a very detailed debate on the different aspects and potential effects of cryptocurrency. Furthermore, ECOFIN’s chair (Kiril) was incredibly proud of his delegates for not only producing a terrific overall amount of more than 90 memes during the conference but also keeping the flow going for several weeks after MaltMUN officially ended.

Socials

Outside of the committee sessions, MaltMUN featured amazing socials. The first evening social event was hosted in an art museum in Valetta and consisted of a joint dinner for all delegates and a relaxed get-together afterwards. It was a great opportunity to get to know other participants and to catch up to the developments as well as memes and gossip of the other committees. While the first social had delivered a solid start, the second one, although being introduced already before the beginning of the conference as the marquee social event of MaltMUN still managed to surpass expectations. It was hosted in the elegantly vintage Casino Maltese featuring large balconies towards the main street as well as a sizable dancefloor surrounded by a spanning gallery. To maintain our passionately built up image of not only standing out in debate but most importantly on the socials, the Mannheim delegation obviously took full advantage of MaltMUN’s amazing open bar policy during both events. I guess it is fair to say that we all had an incredibly fun evening, be it on the dancefloor, during ironic fun-arguments on the balcony or terribly failing in taking sophisticated photos in the foyer. After the official party had ended, Kiril led us to team up with the other international chairs for a house (after-)party. After certain MUN Mannheim members had overcome their navigational difficulties in finding the place we (for whatever reason) had some kind of a spontaneous Queen karaoke session to end the evening on a high note (WORST pun of all time!).

Closing & day after

After the last day of committee sessions, MaltMUN ended with a closing ceremony; for us, its highlights were, of course, Jan receiving an Honourable Mention for his performance as Russian delegate, while Kiril together with his co-chair was awarded Best Chairing Duo of the whole conference. Therefore, it is fair to say that the conference was a great success for our delegation as well as our society. In terms of fun awards each delegation member can also proudly claim some respectable classics like “best dressed”, “best drinker” or “future dictator” his own.

After the end of the conference, we stayed in Malta for another one and a half days enjoying a little holiday. After spending another fun night in the city of Valetta, we used the next day to visit the old templar capital of Mdina which also had been a filming location for Game of Thrones and is definitely worth a visit for its historic architecture. At this point a huge shoutout to our local “tour guide” Sam who after participating in MaltMUN showed us around all the most important sites of Mdina and furthermore explained us the way towards a relatively unknown beach in Valetta. There we were able to spend the early evening relaxing after experiencing several conference days/nights (as always) without a nearly sufficient amount of sleep.

Conclusion

From my experience, MaltMUN was a great experience. It is an extremely well-organized conference, offering a fantastic standard regarding quality of venues as well as catering, especially in relation to the relatively moderate delegate fee of 35€ this year. I would clearly recommend a visit; however, delegates who already have any kind of MUN experience or visited our weekly sessions several times definitely should not be shy to apply for the UNSC (from our experience the most advanced committee). If visiting MaltMUN, it is always worth to plan a few extra days outside the conference to visit the touristic sites of Malta as there are a lot. I, for example, would have also liked to spend a whole day doing a boat ride to a beach and just hanging out there if I had the time.

To close my report, I would like to give special thanks to Kiril Lavrov who also initially brought up the idea to visit MaltMUN, as well as my two amazing fellow delegates Jan Napp and Jana Preuß who made the whole trip an awesome experience.