1. The Model United Nations is where students get together acting as a representative from one of the countries in either the General Assembly or the Security Council and discuss current issues in the world such as the European Migrant Crisis and the planet’s heat rising from climate change. These issues give students an opportunity to see another countries perspective on how they plan to take action on the current issue. In our Model United Nations in was the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia. Ethiopia is a developing country and hosts the 6th largest number of refugees in the world, the largest in Africa and continues to grow since Ethiopia has an open arms policy they take in refugees from neighboring countries mainly. Ethiopia has looked at climate change with the idea that over time they can benefit from it in the future if everyone succeeds with what was agreed to in the Paris Accord to keep the planet's temperature lower. Ethiopia is looking for uses of alternative energy, eco-friendly technology, and to lower their total greenhouse gas emissions by 64% by the year 2030. Since Ethiopia is a developing country they don’t have unlimited cash so for both of these two projects Ethiopia is working on they will need to be funded in some way shape or form.
2. I’m not very comfortable with public speaking nor am I a loud person so it was a challenge for me to get my voice in their to share the beliefs of Ethiopia. Going off this I think it is a step back that I didn’t give my speech at the Model UN conference on Climate Change but I did speak up a few times which I wasn’t sure if I was really going to do that also I submitted an amendment towards a resolution and going into the meeting I had no intention in doing that. Outside of the meeting I am most proud of my Policy Paper on the refugee crisis because I felt very confident when I submitted the document and when reading it I thought it was one of the best assignments I had done all year. Something I would have liked to refine would either be my performance at the MUN conference because I didn’t give my countries speech on Climate Change and I wish I had or my policy paper on Climate Change because while I was writing it I felt disinterested and hardly paid attention to it. Since I had to use this to keep up with other assignments in the class I wish I did a better job because I would look back at it and see errors and it made me want to go back and completely redo the assignment.
3. This project made me realize that I need to pay more attention to global issues. Going into I had heard of the Refugee Crisis and Climate Change, I knew nothing about these topics when we started this project. Learning about these topics gave me more insight on them as well as specific countries perspectives on them. It was extremely interesting to learn that Ethiopia has an open door policy for refugees and that they were the first give them an opportunity to be legally documented as a human with Civil Registration. I was unaware that Ethiopia was a country that welcomed refugees and is looking to use climate change to create a more stable economy for themselves. Learning about these different topics these countries and mine specifically. It gives you an idea on what countries are going through and how they choose to treat problems in the world (I.E the United States attempting to back out of the Paris Accord and other countries urging them to stay apart of it). This project gives you a lot of time to engage in your country. You slowly get lost in being the country while working on assignments. It truly was interesting and a very different experience to any project I’ve done before it.