About MUNs and Debating Societies in Pakistan

Mod­el Unit­ed Nations (MUN) – a real­is­tic sim­u­la­tion of the pro­ce­dures and debates tak­ing place in the dif­fer­ent com­mit­tees of the Unit­ed Nations – the idea inspires uni­ver­si­ty and col­lege stu­dents around the world to orga­nize nation­al or inter­na­tion­al con­fer­ences in their respec­tive insti­tu­tions, where par­tic­i­pants take the role of del­e­gates and for a cou­ple of days rep­re­sent the mem­ber states of the UN and their stances in dif­fer­ent com­mit­tees. Get­ting an insight into actu­al pro­ceed­ings at UN lev­el, for­mu­lat­ing res­o­lu­tions to deal with and find solu­tions for chal­lenges and con­flicts of inter­na­tion­al inter­est, as well as get­ting in con­tact with stu­dents from all over the world moti­vates young peo­ple to pre­pare for and par­tic­i­pate in those con­fer­ences, which even cur­rent UN Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Ban Ki-Moon appre­ci­at­ed on sev­er­al occa­sions.

Look­ing back, admit­ted­ly, I got my first per­son­al con­tact to Pak­istan by meet­ing Pak­istani par­tic­i­pants at exact­ly such sort of MUN con­fer­ence at my uni­ver­si­ty in Muen­ster, Ger­many, and my first vis­it to Lahore also includ­ed tak­ing part in a Pak­istani MUN. For me this meant – at least to some extend – that I ini­tial­ly got to know more about Pak­istan through its young stu­dents com­mit­ted to debat­ing and devel­op­ing their diplo­mat­ic skills, rather than through the often neg­a­tive media cov­er­age or oth­er sources sole­ly focus­ing on the chal­lenges and prob­lems Pak­istan is fac­ing or stereo­typ­ing the Pak­istani pop­u­la­tion.

After a while, how­ev­er, I found some rather odd aspects about MUNs and the debat­ing soci­eties orga­niz­ing them, some of them, from my expe­ri­ences, more pre­vail­ing in Pak­istan, oth­ers cer­tain­ly to be found at oth­er MUNs as well; and all of them pure­ly sub­jec­tive for sure. First of all, MUNs in Pak­istan are high­ly com­pet­i­tive – prob­a­bly few­er stu­dents take part part­ly due to the social events in the evening at the end of the sim­u­la­tion con­fer­ences. The best par­tic­i­pants – those hav­ing been most con­vinc­ing in their del­e­gate role and show­ing best diplo­mat­ic skills – are usu­al­ly award­ed, which of course turns the whole con­fer­ence into some sort of com­pe­ti­tion. And to me it seems like Pak­istani stu­dents have devel­oped their very own high lev­el on that: On the one hand the debat­ing skills of a lot of stu­dents are indeed impres­sive. But on the oth­er hand, you wit­ness peo­ple speak­ing as fast as no diplo­mat would ever do in an UN debate, every­body seek­ing to be the author of the final res­o­lu­tion rather than con­tribut­ing to an exist­ing doc­u­ment or form­ing strict­ly oppos­ing blocs, which reminds you of a cold-war-like sit­u­a­tion instead of a debate in the Com­mit­tee on Social, Cul­tur­al and Human­i­tar­i­an Affairs. Every­body wants to stand out, to make an extra­or­di­nary con­tri­bu­tion to the debate, but not in order to find a solu­tion to the chal­lenge the com­mit­tee is deal­ing with, but to be rec­og­nized by the judges who decide upon the awards. This is why one of the first ques­tions of par­tic­i­pants most of the time is: “How is the exact award pol­i­cy in this com­mit­tee?” I would some­times even go as far as claim­ing that some par­tic­i­pants are not real­ly inter­est­ed in the top­ic being dis­cussed and its pos­si­ble impli­ca­tions. One of the main rea­sons why par­tic­i­pants are work­ing so hard to win is cer­tain­ly that many (Pak­istani) uni­ver­si­ties send the most suc­cess­ful par­tic­i­pants to oth­er MUNs abroad, includ­ing to Europe, USA etc., of course expect­ing them to bring back best del­e­gate awards.

The stu­dents orga­niz­ing these con­fer­ences first of all deserve a good amount of appre­ci­a­tion, con­sid­er­ing the time they sac­ri­fice to the plan­ning and orga­ni­za­tion of the whole ‘event’ and how they ensure quite a pro­fes­sion­al atmos­phere and flow of pro­ce­dures dur­ing the con­fer­ence. How­ev­er, to me it some­times seems like MUNs in this con­text are yet anoth­er suit­able occa­sion to estab­lish or strength­en hier­ar­chies between stu­dents, in favor of those orga­niz­ing the MUN and those chair­ing the com­mit­tees. Sure­ly, me as a Euro­pean, I might have dif­fer­ent expe­ri­ences and a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive than Pak­ista­nis on (espe­cial­ly age) hier­ar­chies, but orga­niz­ing an MUN for the sake of enjoy­ing the pres­tige of being able to com­mand oth­er stu­dents does in my view not relate to the ide­al behind MUNs.

Final­ly, MUNs seem to be anoth­er con­ve­nient ‘self-exhi­bi­tion spot’ for the next per­fect face­book pro­file pic­ture, which might be the sec­ond main ambi­tion while par­tic­i­pat­ing, right after win­ning a best del­e­gate award.
MUNs are based on this under­ly­ing ide­al­is­tic idea of sim­u­lat­ing the world’s largest and polit­i­cal­ly most impor­tant – though not nec­es­sar­i­ly most pow­er­ful – inter­gov­ern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tion and devel­op­ing solu­tions for inter­na­tion­al chal­lenges. Inter­est­ing­ly, some­times par­tic­i­pants are real­ly con­vinc­ing in demon­strat­ing that they can do bet­ter than the actu­al UN diplo­mats with­in the often slow mov­ing deci­sion mak­ing process­es, char­ac­ter­ized by a lack of com­mit­ment on behalf of the UN mem­ber states. On the oth­er hand, par­tic­i­pants might sim­ply be equal­ly suc­cess­ful in por­tray­ing a quite real­is­tic image of UN pro­ce­dures, which can also be char­ac­ter­ized by hier­ar­chies and pow­er rela­tions on state and on indi­vid­ual lev­el, as well as by indi­vid­ual diplo­mats’ influ­ence. In this regard, MUNs, com­bined with the uplift­ed posi­tion of (the heads of) debat­ing soci­eties, are often con­sid­ered some sort of elite project, which – that is what I expe­ri­enced in Ger­many – you jus­ti­fi­ably only get fund­ing for from insti­tu­tions which sup­port this very notion.