The first ever Model United Nations Conference was held in Geneva, at the Palais des Nations, in 1953. The brain-child of Bob Leach and a number of other teachers at The International School of Geneva, it was called The Students’ United Nations and aimed to ensure that the potential leaders of tomorrow did not make the same mistakes as their predecessors. The Students’ United Nations ran successfully for 40 years, before being revamped into the Students’ League of Nations, now in its twelfth year. This remains the only Model United Nations conference to take place within the UN itself in Geneva and we are honoured that our efforts in creating the Oman Model United Nations Project have been rewarded with a long-standing invitation for Sultan’s School students to attend this highly prestigious and selective conference.

About fifteen years later, a similar Model United Nations project was started in the USA which led ultimately to the creation of what is now known as THIMUN – The Hague International Model United Nations. The aims of THIMUN are somewhat different; whereas the Geneva model is based around the creation of a Model United Nations General Assembly, the THIMUN model seeks to additionally create a number of different UN commissions such as the Commission for the Environment, The Economic and Social Committee (ECOSOC) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The various different forums make this a much more complex model of conference to organize, and THIMUN style conferences often involve a much larger number of students than the Geneva model, although the basic principles are the same.

Here in Oman, we have sought to take what is best from both models of conference. See About The Oman MUN for further details.

The decision was made to keep the format simple for the first year, as the vast majority of participating students were new to MUN. Hence, we followed the Geneva model of conference, which is less complex and easier to control than the THIMUN model (see About MUN).

Our major objective, however, was always to create a major international conference that would attract leading MUN players from the Gulf Region and beyond. For year two, therefore, the decision was made to develop the format in a number of important respects and rather than jumping straight for the THIMUN model, we decided to look at the relative strengths and weaknesses of both models of conference.

One of the great strengths of the selective Geneva model is that students are always very well prepared on the specific resolutions for debate because these have been notified to them in advance, but one of its few disadvantages is that only a relatively small number of delegates have the opportunity of debating their own draft resolution at the conference – most must speak on someone else’s resolution. To address this concern, we made the decision to include two UN Commissions, the Commission for the Environment and the Economic and Social Committee (ECOSOC), allowing students themselves to select the resolutions which are carried forward to these commissions and ensuring that a greater number of resolutions make it to the conference. To balance this spontaneity, however, two resolutions will be fast-tracked to The General Assembly, ensuring that delegates have a significant period of time to prepare themselves for these two debates.

Additionally, we were keen to retain the selective nature of the Geneva model and avoid becoming too large and unwieldy, as students sometimes travel a long way to be present at an MUN, only to find that they are denied the opportunity to speak in The General Assembly through sheer pressure of numbers. Also, there is sometimes a danger with larger conferences that the real debate gets lost amidst the attempt to simulate official UN procedure. We therefore decided against introducing more than just the two commissions in the first instance, and sacrificed a degree of authenticity by allowing all delegations to sit on both commissions.

Finally, we have introduced a number of innovations of our own, such as the online pre-conference merging of resolutions, whereby delegations are able to co-sponsor the resolutions of those with similar concerns in advance of the conference. Again, if this is not wholly authentic in terms of official UN procedure, we do not apologise: our prime objective is, and always will be, to maximise the educational impact of the debates themselves.