students rule the world (day 2)

Jonas Van Orshoven   (Ambassador of Russia)

Friday, the 10^th of March 2017

On the second day of the General Assembly of the United Nations we were a lot more focussed than on the first. The discussions were more about concrete issues which proved a good way to provoke lively debates.

A wide range of topics were discussed, ranging from health effects and environmental effects of nuclear weapons to preventing nuclear weapons to fall in the hands of non-governmental (ie terrorist) organizations.

Although it was possible to find some allies in most of the discussions held, there were also some proposals that troubled me deeply. For example, a proposal was discussed which imposed on nuclear powers a sanction (non-nuclear states call it a tax) to pay an amount of money per warhead. Such rules would form an unprecedented violation of the sovereignty of the Russian Federation and are therefore not open to discussion. My attempts to prevent this discussion failed and that's how we had a significant amount of time wasted on a topic that never would have been passed through the Security Council since Russia and the United States have a veto right.

Unfortunately this was about the only point on which I could follow the US today. Yesterday, the US seemed to go along with the withdrawal of its nuclear weapons from the territory of its non-nuclear allies. Today, however, the United States were less willing to cooperate and have made a few statements that are regrettable.

Yesterday I saw the opportunity to present myself as a delegation very much willing to cooperate on partial nuclear disarmament. This stance has brought me some goodwill, although Russia has of course important conditions before it can proceed to such a partial disarmament. Those conditions are not to be sneezed at, but because of my constructive approach yesterday, most delegations seem willing to elaborate on those conditions.

One of these conditions is a ban on the use and placement of arms (nuclear or conventional) in outer space. This issue remains one of Russia's priorities and was discussed shortly after noon. Unfortunately at that point the attention waned and some delegations seemed unwilling to deal with the issue in a serious way. Still, the proposal will be crucial when they want to write a resolution for me to agree on.

Two working papers were introduced at the end of the sessions, one of which was written by myself and the Chinese delegation. We hope we will be able to use this paper tomorrow which would enable us to focus even more on concrete topics during negotiations. The fact that those topics are chosen by myself and a major ally, will hopefully allow us to lead the discussion to issues we consider important.

The other working paper was submitted by the Australian delegation. As I found out yesterday, Australia sent a very well-prepared delegation whose proposals don't always match Russia's. At first glance Australia's representative has some ideas I can live with, but there are also some that are not appropriate and I certainly do not want them to be in the final resolution. Hopefully I can use the evening activities tonight to convince as much delegations as possible to discuss our working paper first instead of focussing the discussion on the ideas of my Australian colleague.

Joseph Steimetz   (Ambassadeur van de VS)

Friday, the 10^th of March 2017

Maybe its good to start this diary with a few phrases about last nights pub crawl:

If there is one thing that the pub crawl has learnt us, after a long day full of negotiations and discussions not being able to lead to any agreement nor resolution, it's something we all might have learnt in chemistry class: alcohol is a solution, if not the solution. It was a nice surprise seeing delegates who were arch enemies by day, coming along, dancing together, laughing and joking together and even singing together after a few drops of alcohol.

With that being said, lets get back to business!

The day has already started with some heavy negotiations and discussions going on between the delegates, especially between the nuclear powers on one side, and all the other ones on the other. It is clear that quite some countries are hoping for a long term solution and striving for the entire disarmament of all sorts of nuclear weapons/warheads/… whatsoever, as they have let us all know in some of the moderated caucuses throughout the day.

At the moment – this is for the near future, and as it looks for it the long run as well – the United States doesn't want to hear of any sort of total decomposition, disarmament of all of its nuclear weapons etc. That would, not in a million years, be an option for the US.

Before we left for our daily lunch break, the chairs have once again urged us not to come late for the next session after the break since there would be “consequences and punishments” for the delegates who would dare to arrive late, even if that meant only one minute late.

Me being me, plus me representing our most beloved number one president, President Trump, I saw it as my duty and honour to do so as it would only be fitting to do. So in total Trump style I refused to come on time and entered the conference room exactly one minute late to the next session.

As expected, I together with my fellow partners/delegates (those who also arrived late) were all being called to the front of the room and were told to perform a dance in front of the chairs, delegates and the rest of the world since there was a camera guy standing there filming it all with a camera as big as the M1 A2 Abraham tanks being used by the US military.

The song we had to dance to was the Ketchup song by Las Ketchup. It is safe to say the we have all, miserably failed in dancing to its tunes.

As the day passed by the debates starting to get more and more fierce, some of the delegates might have started to get a bit tired from all of the debating going on.

Best example would be myself: as I was not fully concentrated during one of the afternoon caucuses, I made, in total Trump fashion, a remark to the delegate of Nigeria about her use of words, and suggested she might be better off taking some English language courses to improve it. I know, it wasn’t a nice nor polite thing to do, and believe me, on a personal note it still bothers me and I have extensively apologized for it both in writing and in public.

After a long day full of fruitful and important discussion I am glad to see that we are all working on a working paper.

Have a good day, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

Joyce Ibens   (President of Romania)

Friday, the 10^th of March 2017

Today we started our committee session with a slight hangover thanks to the amazing pub crawl we had with all the delegates. I can admit that the Prime Minister of the Netherlands and myself quite enjoyed the Belgian beers.

However, that did not take away that we take gender equality seriously. We concluded our discussion of yesterday because the majority wanted to move on to the other topics. Today we focused on gender based violence and human trafficking more. We all agreed that the majority of victims that suffer violence are female, but when talking about social awareness we believe that both men and women should be incorporated in those campaigns. Romania wants to raise awareness that men can be victims of sexual or domestic violence as well.

Hungary started a conversation on the influence of the increased migration flow on human trafficking, but other delegates, including myself, did not find it productive to get into a discussion on whether or not to close borders when talking about gender equality.

Human trafficking was the most important topic we talked about. Tomorrow we're planning on starting some resolutions that include concrete measures on human trafficking and gender based violence.

Pauline Theunis   (President of Slovenia)

Friday, the 10^th of March 2017

The day began with a vigorous debate, but this quickly changed and led to many statements but few solutions.

Hungary has revised its position on quotas, which was conducive to the draft paper. Romania and Slovenia often have the same views as us, which helps enormously in pressing our ideas forward. They launched many relevant points that helped the debates. Finland came out of her shell and proposed a lot of measures that we can all learn from. It also supports the draft which we are preparing.

Luxembourg also contributed a lot to the conversation, as did Belgium, maybe sometimes even a little too much. Towards the end you could tell that everyone was tired and we started to argue in a circle.

The overall theme today was human trafficking. Because the differences between countries are so large and each Member State wants to take very different measures, the conversation went a bit stiff. The collaboration between the Netherlands, Romania, Austria, Denmark, Finland and Slovenia for the final proposal is taking shape. Let's hope that by tomorrow we are all ready to come up with some practical solutions that everyone can agree on.

I feel that the many formal rules prevent us to have a real full-fledged debate instead of firing statement after statement, so I think tommorow we should start a debate on the advantages and disadvantages of a moderated vs an unmoderated caucus.