Timur Bapiev Represents Guyana at “Change the World” Model UN

 

Timur Bapiev (left) with Model UN participants at the UN General Assembly

The Model United Nations is an educational simulation of UN committees, in which you learn about diplomacy, international relations, and the UN. During a Model UN, you represent a specific country; in other words, you become a delegate from this specific country. My country was Guyana, which is located in South America and borders Suriname, Brazil, and Venezuela. A delegation can consist of one or more people; in my case, I had a partner whose name was Arpan Patel. We became friends and together we represented the delegation of Guyana in the “Change the World” Model United Nations (CWMUN). The Model UN has a lot of committees, like the Security Council, ECOSOC, Trusteeship Council etc. I got the General Assembly, and I was happy with it.

The CWMUN was held in NYC for three days. It started on the March 16th and finished on the 18th with a closing ceremony. Before coming to the MUN, Arpan and I wrote a position paper for Guyana as our MUN assignment. Honestly, it was hard to write, I spent hours just thinking about how to write a position paper and I read tons of materials about topics of the MUN and about Guyana.

One thing I liked about the MUN is that you can make friends from all over the world. It was a huge resource for networking. In the opening ceremony, Bill Clinton came to speak to the delegation. He made an awesome speech; there were other speakers but I liked Clinton’s speech the most.

We started the MUN General Assembly the next day after the opening ceremony; but before the opening ceremony I got passes to the UN building. The second day was much more interesting; our topics were Nuclear Proliferation in the Middle East, World Military Resource Reallocation to Promote Sustainable Development, and Concerns over Access to Biological Weapons by Terrorist Groups. I met students from Guyana, who were representing Bulgaria. They were very friendly; they told us that they could help with any question related to Guyana. Later, they surprised us with presents. They gifted us with flags of Guyana and journals about Guyana, I did not expect it, and I was deeply touched.

For the closing ceremony, I eventually came into the General Assembly Hall, which was gorgeous and huge. There are seats for 1,800 people.  I had never thought that I would be able to sit in this amazing hall of the UN! If someone had told me two years ago that I would visit the UN, I would not have believed them at all. I would say, it is impossible! For me as a student of international relations, it was extremely important to participate in this MUN. Now I am dreaming about working in the United Nations, as a representative of Kyrgyzstan to the UN.

The last day of the MUN was a sad day because it was a time when we had to say goodbye to each other. All from different parts of the world, we suddenly became very close to each other for these three short days, and that was amazing!

Written by Timur Bapiev (Kyrgyzstan) a 2017-2018 Global UGRAD student at Keene State College