After participating ISPP Model United Nations 2016 (ISPP MUN 2016), Phnom Penh, I received another opportunity to participate in other Model United Nations (MUN) in Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam. It is called, “SAIMUN 2017.” This was another huge event for me since it has hosted many students from many distinguished schools around Asia. The ledger was one of those schools, including me and my seven friends.
This year of MUN, our school got a student who was willing to join the Security Council. For another seven students, we individually joined in a different committee. I decided to attend in General Assembly Three with the focuses on cultural heritage sites, basic health care, natal policies, and social development. I must say that the topics were extremely difficult compared to ISPP MUN in 2016. Everything had gotten serious and complicated since this event was international.
The schedule of the whole event was similar to other MUN events. But since there were four topics that were needed to debate on, it was a little bit tight and confused. We got only one month to prepare everything, including the resolutions, and many research. The event assigned all the Liger students as the delegations of Sweden in every committee. It was an honor for Liger students to be designated as the representatives of this country. In general, Kingdom of Sweden is a neutral nation.
On the 15th of March, 2017, we left Liger to Vietnam for the event. It was held on the 17th and the 18th. It was a long destiny and it was my third time visiting there. My memorial reflection once we arrived there, was that I just realized Vietnam is a communist country. My friends and facilitators were giving me a confused and shocked face. We got to travel around the city for two days before the event started. It was really satisfying to learn about Vietnamese histories and culture, including the people, food, religion, and all the fun activities.
It was the 17th; my friends including me were starting to feel the butterflies in our stomachs. I started to feel nervous, uncomfortable, and about to pass away. I mean we were really proud of ourselves for getting this far. We were extremely determined and prepared for the research for the whole event. Once we arrived in our committee, it was joyful to meet new people and got to be friend with most of them. Moreover, getting to observed other people were in their roles was also interesting and beneficial to regard those people as your role models.
Specifically, in my committee, there were a lot of good and passionate delegates with high confidence and strong ground. It was my first time joining MUN internationally and I could feel the intention and uncomfortable moments during the conference. I loved my committee so much and one of my favorite topics was about the health care system. I was chosen to be the main submitter for this topic and for sure that my heart was beating rapidly.
Being the main submitter of a resolution is not difficult. But it is difficult when you actually do it. After giving my speech of the whole resolution, I got a barrage of questions from the delegates. The questions were tough since it was all about the origins and the reasons. After all, I was feeling proud of myself. I appreciated all the people in the assembly, who sent many supporting messages to congratulate me. I was confident and happy to see and experience that taking risk is not a bad idea. It creates many memorials, small moments in your memory. Until now, I still remember the whole situation of how did I feel at that time.
Overall, joining SAIMUN was my life-changing experience. It was changing my view of the world, especially people. I got to meet and befriend with new people; in fact, I got to know them as a person in their amazing characters. Even though the whole conference was scary and the people were intimidating, there were also many hilarious moments we had with each other. After this conference, I started to see many issues and accomplishments of the world and I feel like it is my opportunity to be a part of solving those problems.
Check out the website: https://saimun2017.weebly.com/