Each year, CWA’s Model UN team takes on the identity of a UN member nation, debate world issues and solve global crises at national conferences.  Through the Model UN program, students learn how international laws are created and conflicts resolved.  This month the team participated in a conference at Rutgars University in New Jersey as Vatican City where they tackled the same issues facing the UN General Assembly that week.  

“Not only are they learning firsthand how international organizations, nation states, and the UN operates; they are leaning very valuable skills, such as how to negotiate, listen attentively, craft questions and statements with clarity, and consensus building skills,” wrote advisor Nick Coddington in an email from the conference.

On their first afternoon in New Jersey, the students attended a training session where they leaned about parliamentary procedures and the complicated, but necessary, rules of order for operating within the framework of the UN.  They also learned about the issues the delegates would tackle. By the evening, teens from around the country were holding committee meetings and the conference was well underway.  On the second day of the conference, students began debating points, weighing possibilities, and crafting resolutions.

Coddington was especially impressed with the role CWA students played at the conference and the manner in which they embraced the nonvoting role of Vatican City.  “The teens from other nations only consider their side and point of view,” said Coddington.  “In several committees our students stood up to say ‘We have to consider the moral ramifications of this resolution on international community!’  Out students really made the other teen conference members stop and think on a more global and just scale.”

In an unusual move, the other delegates at the conference chose to give the Vatican City team full voting privileges at the conference.  The Holy City is actually an observer nation at the UN and thus has no voting privileges.  However, CWA’s team was so engaged and effective in the debates and drafting of resolutions, the Rutgers Model UN Staff made a recommendation to the General Assembly that they become a full voting member.  The resolution was passed without debate.

“In all my experience of being part of the Model UN, I have never seen this happen before.  It speaks volumes of the work each member of the team has done here,” said Coddington.  “In their closing meeting, our teens were mentioned by every committee advisor as mature, engaged, and passionate delegates!  They each found the courage to speak, debate, negotiate, compromise, and find a way to solve the problems of their committees.”

The CWA Model UN team will begin preparing in January to participate in a conference at the University of Washington in April.