Have you ever heard of the Model United Nations? If not, that is fine, Model United Nation (M.U.N) is a model of the annual conference of the United Nations. The conference discusses different topics or issues around the world with the honors of delegates from many countries together. MUN is pretty much the same. It is an educational simulation for students to understand the world-issues, international relations, especially to experience the United Nations (UN) conference.
There have been so many MUN conferences happening before but guess what, it has only been in English. So, our facilitator along with some of our students thought of a very unique idea. We wanted to make the first-ever MUN in the Khmer language. The purpose of this was to teach us, the Cambodian students to understand the use of professional language in Khmer, and also provide the opportunity for the other millions of Cambodian students out there who only know a little bit of English or can not understand the language. With the Khmer version being made, they can understand and experience the same as the casual conferences but with their own language.
There have been a few times where the Khmer MUN is being held in our school with our students and a few other schools. But there has not been any time where every student has participated together yet. With all the preparations and research, we made it possible and had the Khmer-Model United Nations conferences participated by every student in our school. Well, there are only a bit over 100 students in our school, if you do not know yet, and wonder how many students are there. Feel free to know more about our school with the website: http://www.ligeracademy.org/
There were four general conferences along with a security general conference. Each conference had two topics to discuss. I was the delegate of the Kingdom of Cambodia under the topic of “Legalizing the same-sex marriage” and “Drug Trafficking”. We had plenty of time to do research and practice our speeches. It was my first time experiencing MUN and I was very excited.
The first day of the Khmer Model United Nations. Everyone dressed professionally in suits and was looking very good. When it came to the opening speech, I was the first one up because of the alphabetical order in Khmer. I could not tell how excited, and I was a bit nervous, to be honest. But I made it in the end, and I was so proud and congratulated myself for finishing the first main job of the day. Everyone’s speech was very professional and got the job done with quality. After all the opening speeches, everyone worked with different delegations on finding resolutions to our topics as some agreed on the topic and some did not but we had to discuss the topic and find the right resolutions.
The second day was the debating day. Well, it wasn’t like a debate, it was made to be more like a discussion where the main submitters presented their resolutions and the other delegates ask questions and discuss one by one. I got myself the opportunity to ask and gave a few speeches as well. We could not talk with anyone but sending letters through the admins of the conference.
At the end of the day, everyone came together to do the full conference with the other final topics. Here came the fun part as we finished the event by having a quiz night and the ending ceremony in which the facilitators gave their impressions along with the chairs, and delegates.
Overall, it was a magnificent experience to be part of the conference, to take the opportunity to know more about the real-world issues, and to understand the concept and what it was like to be in the United Nations meeting.
Thank you very much for your time reading my portfolio, if you have any questions, feel free to contact me or comment it down. Have a great day!