Fulda goes (more) global - next steps MUN Fulda
20 Nov 2024
Negotiations, collaboration, and complex discussions were part of this year's online UN simulation MacMUN 2024, hosted by the UN Club at MacEwan University Edmonton (Canada). More than 50 delegates from Ukraine, Germany, Japan, Croatia and Canada worked together virtually last weekend. They passed three resolutions CCPJ/RES/1/1, CCPJ/RES/1/2, and CCPJ/RES/1/3 on the topic of "Criminal Justice Responses to Cybercrime in All its Forms". Working among them in various breakout rooms and plenum sessions were four students from the Department of Social and Cultural Sciences.
MacEwan University (Canada) is a collaboration partner of the Department of Social and Cultural Sciences in the DAAD project "Transnational Governance and Human Rights". The MacMUN conference took first place during the pandemic and has become a regular event that enables collaboration across borders and continents. "At MacMUN, individuals become global citizens", emphasised Nathan Poe, the current President of the UN Club at the beginning of the two-day event.
Melike Schalomon, the dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at MacEwan university, opened MacMUN 2024 as Keynote Speaker. Coming from Germany originally, she greeted the German students with a warm "Grüess Gott miteinander" before encouraging the delegates "to take full advantage not only to debate and discuss but also to learn from one another". Schalomon emphasised that she is always "amazed at the critical evaluation of issues that comes out of this conference".
"Model United Nations" (MUN) are a worldwide practice of simulations in which participants take on the role of an international delegate in a simulated committee of the United Nations (UN). Since 2019, Fulda delegations have been participating in real life and virtual MUNs. Currently, preparation for and organisation of MUNs are coordinated in the Fulda Centre of Transnational Governance by Prof. Dr. Claudia Wiesner and Muriel C. Pluschke (see www.centreoftransnationalgovernance.de/model-united-nations/) and MUN is by now part of the teaching curriculum of the MA programs ICEUS and MAHRS. In November 2024, a collaboration with the Deutsche Gesellschaft für die Vereinten Nationen Landesverband Hessen e.V. (DGVN) started. The beginning of the cooperation was marked with a lecture by Matthias Eiles, head of the DGVN Hessen, and Ekkehard Griep, head of DGVN Germany, on "The United Nation's Pact for the Future - Results and Implications" within the Lecture Series 2024/2025.
The next conferences to be attended by Fulda delegations are EfMUN 2025 in January and NMUN New York 2025 in April. MUN being part of the curricula of ICEUS and MAHRS, the next two-semester cycle will start in the summer term 2025, organised by Prof. Dr. Claudia Wiesner and Prof. Dr. Philip Liste. The first part of the seminar in the summer term contains an introduction into international law and transnational politics as well as into the skills necessary for participating in a MUN. In preparation for the virtual or the real life MUN in the second part of the seminar in the winter term 2025/2026 students will work on a position paper and during the MUN take on the role of a delegate of a country and negotiate on its behalf, work on working papers with the other delegates and vote for resolutions.
Links:
DGVN Hessen https://www.dgvn-hessen.org/
MacEwan MUN https://macewanmun.org/