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MUN: A Simulation or Assimilation?
Judy El Baba
June 4, 2025
Model United Nations, a character-building extracurricular, simultaneously normalises the integration of the youth into the same existing flawed system.
How does it work?
Model United Nations is an extracurricular activity that usually encompasses high school or early college students. The simulation model allows participants to recreate United Nations or international conferences and committees under specified political issues, generally linked to the UN Sustainable Development Goals. For example, addressing the human rights violations in Gaza as a topic can be modeled in a simulation of the UN Human Rights Council. “Delegates” are students who represent a member state’s stance on the problem, and the role of “the Chair” is to assess the performance of each. The end goal of the conference is to draft resolution papers that attempt to address the topic at hand, each voted upon in a similar fashion to UN procedure. While the evident benefits of such an activity enhance the participants’ character growth and skills, this form of academic role-play, nevertheless, assimilates the rising youth into an international system immobilised by crippling structural challenges.
Benefits of Becoming a Delegate
Becoming a delegate undeniably empowers students’ soft skills. By not only representing, but also defending, a country’s position, the average delegate must be well-versed on the politics of the assigned state. This prompts the participants’ research skills and public-speaking skills, where speeches are delivered by each delegate to stimulate negotiation and debate. Their critical thinking and writing skills are also provoked during resolution drafting, in which students implement their gained awareness of global issues to combat them with insightful solutions. Hence, the delegate finishes the conference with an acquired perspective on diplomacy and international relations, aspiring to win the “Best Delegate/Diplomacy” award at the same time.
MUN Speech Sample
Assimilation
The acquired perspective in question often emerges inaccurate. By replicating a structurally-impaired system, students are forced to reach resolutions in an impractical manner. Structural challenges in the UN have a heavy weight on its degree of effectiveness. The most evident example is the use of veto power by the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (P5). The veto power used by the US has consistently protected the Zionist entity from international accountability for its genocidal occupation of Palestine. The use of veto contributes to institutional paralysis, preventing effective solutions from protecting codified human rights laws. The UN also relies on funding from the major contributors. As such, conditional funding can leverage the impact of bias on the decision-making process. The Obama administration, for instance, withheld its funds to UNESCO in 2011 when the group voted to include Palestine as a member state. Double standards have always prevailed in global governance, and the “Global South” is often marginalised from effective decision-making and representation.
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When a student undergoes an MUN simulation without gaining awareness of these flaws, he/she forms a defective perception of diplomacy. The simulation disregards the failure of diplomacy in international, regional, and national resistance. The UN is, in the end, an elite political institution—or an elite political tool, at the very least. It caters to the interests of international superpowers in global governance. Resisting neo-imperialism cannot succeed through global diplomacy in such institutions, institutions that are upheld by the neo-imperialists themselves. Thus, the student may leave the conference holding UN diplomacy in high esteem, unaware of its socio-political consequence (sometimes, lack of consequence!) The simulation normalises and can even celebrate this method of leadership, overlooking the structural realities of this apparatus. Perhaps, the student would even value UN diplomacy as a future career. He/She becomes assimilated into this system and grows accustomed to it.
