Oxford International Model United Nations 2019

by Lukas Westermann

2019 our society sent a delegation to Oxford Model United Nations (OxIMUN) for the second time, after visiting last year for the first time. Our delegation was rather small, with only three delegates, but that didn't prevent us from having a great time. OxIMUN presented itself as the "best MUN conference in Europe", so they set high standards to meet. But hey we are already used to a certain amount of arrogance, from Mannheim's students, so you shouldn't be too surprised to find it at Oxford University.

The city of Oxford itself is worth a visit even without a MUN conference. You encounter countless beautiful old buildings — notably, Christ Church College, where parts of Harry Potter were filmed. The University of Oxford consists of several, more or less independently running, colleges scattered all over Oxford. So, finding our committee rooms was quite challenging at the beginning.

The overall topic of the conference was this year "Challenging and Reforming the international Trade Order". OxIMUN offered a wide range of over 20 committees with all kinds of topics for beginners or experienced delegates. With over 500 delegates it's one of the larger conferences. Finding delegates from all around the world it is also quite international, and definitely one of the academically challenging conferences.  Unique this year was the system of Interconnectivity between the committees. Based on the overall topic, delegates got the chance to negotiate deals with delegates from other committees and to create a cross-committee agenda for their country. Additionally, each country also had a budget, and there existed two financial bodies, the World Bank and the IMF. If for example, Japan in UNHC wanted to spend money on a project, they first would ask the Japanese delegate of the World Bank or IMF for approval. The World Bank and IMF also had the task to approve or deny the financial requests of whole committees for certain projects.

After we all arrived in Oxford only with the (not so small) inconvenience that the phone of one of our delegates was stolen at the airport, we attended the opening ceremony. We found ourselves in the 400-year-old Sheldonian Theatre listening to former and current UN representatives. Including the former Chief of Staff in the DPKO in Kosovo, Dr Saber Azam. Drawing on 40 years of experience, he gave us a refreshingly honest view about the pro and cons of the UN.

Committees

Our delegates represented Japan in the World Bank, Iran in the IMF, and Keyna in UNCATD. The World Bank was dealing with two topics "Creating climate change resilient infrastructure" and "Reforming the World Bank". The first topic wasn't especially the most controversial, and our committee managed to agree on our resolution unanimously. The most contentious aspect was who would finance all these projects. Our delegate was accused of trying to profit from the misery of many poor and natural disaster-stricken countries, by selling its know-how in natural risk management to them (Which obviously wasn't the case!). But even this wasn't enough for the all present Press Corps, who accused the World Bank to be unable to have a lively debate. There isn't too much to say about the second topic, but it was highly technical and to some extent could also have been a case study for consulting. But in the end, it was quite interesting. The best part about the World Bank was that we could discuss the financial requests of other committees. One of those requests was so bad, that we shattered it completely, and forcing this committee to rethink their whole resolution. This certainly was a fun addition to the MUN concept.

"Rethinking global fossil fuel subsidies and putting a price on carbon" and "Balancing Angola's oil dependence and stabilizing its economy" were the topics of the IMF. Compared to the World Bank, the debate was much more heated in this committee. Initially, the committee mostly talked about the subject, but the Interconnectivity aspect got more and more important later. Striking deals and planning strategies with delegates from other committees. Our delegate (Iran), unsurprisingly, found himself often in direct confrontations with the USA and Saudi Arabia. Alleged terror attacks and threats of blocking the Strait of Hormuz were all part of these confrontations.

UNCATD only talked about one topic “Reducing barriers to international trade in the developing world”. After some debate and the creation of two working papers, both blocks managed to find a compromise. The two working papers were merged, and the final resolution got passed.

Socials

There were two socials at OxIMUN: a club night on the first day and the highlight was a black-tie ball on Saturday. The ball was in the Maths-Institute of Oxford University and featured an open bar, live music, and free food. After a short stop at FiveGuys, we all got in our best suits and dresses. Sadly, none of our delegates owned a tuxedo, so next year’s delegation can maybe do better than us. The Mannheim delegation obviously took full advantage of OxiMUNs amazing open bar policy. It’s fair to say that we had a great time, either catching up with other delegates or failing to look photogenic on pictures.

Aftermath

Thanks, due to the proximity of Oxford to London, two of our delegates decided top spend a few days in London after the conference. Our head delegate was less lucky and got so sick during the conference that he was forced to stay in Oxford for a few more days. But he got a chance to attend one of the countless talks at Oxford University. This specific talk was from Paul Romer about his new book. In the end, we all made good use of our time after the conference. A noteworthy event at the conference was also the spontaneous departure of all Chinese delegates because they didn't like "certain debates about Hong Kong". The secretariat simply used this as an opportunity to hold a brief MUN-Crisis event for all delegates about this incident.