SPECPOL

Hi Delegates! The conference is coming up soon! Can you believe that we only have 20 more days until BMUN 66! For some of you, it will be your first time coming to a MUN conference, for others it will be your 3rd or 4th time coming to BMUN. For me, this will be my 7th and last year of MUN (sad face) I remember for my first MUN conference, I represented Equatorial Guinea in the Security Council on the topic of blood diamond trafficking and the Kimberly Process. I blanked out, stuttered through my comments and questions and couldn't muster enough confidence to get on the podium and make my speech. 1. Rules of Procedure: Any MUN conference follows certain Rules of Procedure that describe how and when debate on the topic will happen. These Rules of Procedure are important to understand, as without them you will feel confused and lost. It is always a good idea to  read and understand the Rules of Procedure  before attending the conference, but do not be alarmed if...

Advanced Parliamentary Procedure Hi delegates, it’s Tal! Hope you are all doing well and working hard on your position papers. This week, I want to talk about some advanced parliamentary procedure topics that novice delegates may not be super familiar with. I’ll be going over formal caucus, amendments, voting rights, and dividing the question. For those of you who do not have experience with dividing the question, I would highly recommend for you to read the rest of this post and even doing your own research on it, because it’s a fairly challenging concept. Here it all is: Formal Caucus Presenting Your Resolution After you all finish your resolutions, you can motion to move into formal caucus by using the following sentence structure: “The delegate of X would like to motion for a formal caucus with X-minute speaking time per resolution” (the X’s represent your country and the amount of time). We would vote on whether or not to move into formal caucus, and if t...

Hi Delegates, There seems to have been some confusion with the online platform for submitting documents and, in many cases, only a single position paper has been submitted for a delegation. Each delegation must submit two position papers on each topic and they should be compiled into a single document that is uploaded. There is not an option to upload the documents separately. As always, please reach out to me if you have any further questions about this. Calvin Price

Hello! Hope you guys are working hard on the position papers! Can’t wait to read over some of them. Today, we are going to further look into the case study of the aboriginals population in Australia. The article listed above lays out beautifully the “social gap” between the indigenous and Australian population. And the results are striking. Let’s take a look at these statistics with the lense of health, poverty, and education in to consideration (*look at the topic synopsis if confused). Poverty: We can consider poverty rates first, and what do we see? Compared to the 5.8% unemployment rate of the Australian population, that of the indigenous population quadruples at 20.8%. Education: Students attending school 90% of the time for the Australian population is 79.3%, while for the indigenous population it is 49%. Additionally, compared to the Australian population where 80% of the students have finished year 12, only 61% of students of indigenous backgrounds have done the same....

The World’s Worst Humanitarian Crisis After years of fighting, the countries of North and South Yemen unified to become a single country in 1990. However, even after years of unification, conflict between the different regions still exists today and has led to the current civil war in Yemen. The main power struggle in the country is between the Yemeni government and the Houthi army (an Iranian backed rebel group). Due to political unrest during the Arab Spring, former President Saleh resigned from his position and allowed Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi to take power. However, Hadi eventually fled to Saudi Arabia, where he held presidential power from afar. The fighting is still happening today, and through all this turmoil, the innocent citizens of Yemen have suffered for years on end, facing economic, social, and public health crises. Recently, there has been a new public health threat in Yemen--the spread of diphtheria. This is a bacterial disease that causes mucous membran...