In this excerpt from The Jag — the SMUS student-led school newspaper — Bronwyn Ellis '27 shares her thoughts about being part of the SMUS Model United Nations club. The next SMUSMUN conference will be held November 22 at St. Michaels University School.
Model United Nations (MUN) is one of the biggest clubs at SMUS, and, in my humble opinion, one of the most interesting. As a club, we attend around three conferences a year, both on the island and in Vancouver. At these conferences, students attending have the incredible opportunity to represent countries and people in committees that discuss real-world or historical issues and events. For instance, I have represented Lebanon in UNICEF, debating topics such as access to education and child soldiers. Representing countries I knew little to nothing about has given me perspectives as to what other countries, those that we do not learn much about in school, think about critical global conflicts. MUN is not confined to BC or Canada, there are hundreds of thousands of teenagers around the globe participating in conferences as small as 50 delegates to as large as thousands of delegates.
I run the MUN club here at SMUS and it has been one of my favourite things to do so far this year. At the time of publishing this article, I will have been to 11 MUN conferences in my 4 years at SMUS and my favourite part is not the conferences themselves or the committees, but the people I have met along the way. This year I have had the incredible opportunity to organise and bring together students from eleven different schools at SMUS’ very own MUN conference. Along with inviting delegates from nine schools, we have also assembled an amazing staff team of SMUS students as well as staff from Shawnigan Lake School, Queen Margaret’s School, Mount Douglas Secondary School and Glenlyon Norfolk School. The staff team is responsible for running each committee and as this is the first time we have had staff from other schools, I have to say that it is incredible to collaborate with other teenagers from all over the lower island.
This year marks the fifth iteration of SMUSMUN, and with it comes more schools registering than ever before, along with over a hundred prospective delegates, the largest in the history of SMUSMUN. With more delegates comes more committees, and this year we are offering four committees, the Disarmament and International Security Council (DISEC), the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), the US Senate, and a Historical Crisis Committee (HCC). The topics for each of these committees are Illicit Arms Trafficking, Combating Human Trafficking and Slavery within Global Mining Operations, the Dispute in the South China Sea, and the Siege of Caffa, respectively.
All of these committees and topics represent, for the most part, real and relevant global issues millions of people around the world face each day. The trafficking of firearms has grown exponentially worldwide in the past several years, disrupting national sovereignty, and putting millions of people in danger. Human trafficking and slavery has long been an issue ignored by many, however in 2021, there were over 50 million people, including children, enslaved and trafficked into mining operations. Many Canadians do not pay particularly close attention to the dispute in the South China sea, as it does not relate directly to us. However, if the US got involved, Canada, as a NATO member, would back them. As for the Siege of Caffa, the event was glazed over in Humanities 8 but led to the deadliest plague in Europe. We, the youth, are the future of politics and the future leaders of the world. As such, we must look to the world around us and the past to learn from history’s mistakes and build a better future for ourselves.
If you are a SMUS Middle or Senior School student and this interests you, please feel free to reach out to me at [email protected] and/or visit our website at smusmun.org.
