AMUNC concludes

What a day.

And so today concluded the last General Assembly of AMUNC 2005. Helen Durham, widely known international humanitarian lawyer now with the ICRC, opened the session beautifully. I’m not sure if I’ve heard speakers of such experience and calibre talk on such a down-to-earth – and real – level that didn’t leave me nodding off even once. If the ability to capture my very slippery attention is anything to go by, that is something.

I was amazed at the simultaneous expertise and candour with which she spoke. Not the mention her oodles of cuteness which made hearing (and watching) her so much more bearable. Her path in international humanitarian law has been a rather exceptional one, and I am inspired by her passion – and more significantly – her gusto, and having the courage balls to just go for it, which is what really led her eventually to where she is now.

Take-home lesson: you can have all the legal knowledge in the world, but ultimately, you will still need to listen to those on the ground to be truly informed.

Resolutions, after, were rather interesting – semi-serious on one hand, because of the formality of debates on the proposed resolutions, yet also hilarious at times when ‘rogue nations’ (not my term) acted perfectly true to form. Like when China emphasised their belief in "freedom" of religion. Or "freedom" of thought. And when USA spoke against resolutions on queer rights, or terrorism.

Good times.

One thing about the GA though: I find the amount of debate afforded to the floor rather alarming. Granted, each committee is meant to have sufficiently debated their relevant agenda topic before proceeding to voting at GA, but that leaves out all the other committees’ resolutions, which any one committee would not be privy to. And at the GA, the format of allowing only one speaker for and one speaker against each resolution is one that I find hardly satisfactory. In fact, I would say that it is a rather inadequate framework, considering that it immediately precedes international policy of such scope and magnitude, in the span of a few minutes.

Of course, if what happened at the AMUNC GA was completely different to what happens (or is supposed to happen) in the real UN – leaving me severely mistaken – then I would be glad to have my concerns unfounded.

***
I feel that with a conference like AMUNC, what you get out of it really is what you invest in it to begin with. Sitting on the CHR, I did gain a fair bit from the contributions of the other delegates, as well as the general manner of processes in the course of resolution drafting/voting. However, I would certainly have gotten more out of it, had I researched the topics at hand with somewhat more scrutiny than I afforded.

The challenge for NGOs – who don’t get a vote, and don’t get to sponsor resolutions – is to be able to quickly identity potential allies on specific topics, get our act together on working papers for various countries’ perusal, and lobby them. Hard.

While researching one’s NGO position on an issue may clue one up on what to say when exercising the right of statement, it really is the understanding of the multilateral context of countries’ positions that will contribute most to targeted (and effective) lobbying.

That said, I wonder how many NGOs actually went that far in their research – considering that wasn’t even listed in the recommended research for all delegates.

Nonetheless, the level of preparedness of a delegate was probably inversely proportional to the extent of the (other) challenge of having to think on the balls of your feet – til they’re practically flat – which provided much stimulation, and a huge source of interest.

I’ve enjoyed AMUNC tremendously.


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