I haven't been able to post anything on the blog lately because I have been attending the Harvard National Model United Nations (HNMUN) Conference in the Park Plaza Hotel.
I'm part of a team representing Bentley University at the conference. My partner and I are specifically placed in in the General Assembly and in the Disarmament and and International Security Committee (DISEC). Bentley University has been delegated to represent Finland (What the heck!!! I wanted China! no offense to the Finnish).
DISEC is comprised of several dozens of delegates, I'd estimate at least 150 people in the single committee. The issues we were given was to address the Taliban in Afghanistan or Cyberwarfare (This happened on Thursday). The way the committee works is the begin debate by debating what to debate (confused already?). We have to choose which subject to discuss (which is more important).
Although Afghanistan is a large issue there was a substantial push (including by Finland) to discuss Cyberwarfare (the terrorism of the future). The measure failed after several HOURS of debating which one to talk about. When the vote decided to discuss Afghanistan, time was essentially up and just a few nations, including Finland, spoke on the issue in front of the other delegates.
Today there has been extensive work on addressing the issue of the Taliban. Different UN blocs have united forces such as the EU, African Union, etc coming up with their own proposals for a resolution. Many of the different European blocs have begun to merge their different proposals into a central one that provides a comprehensive solution.
Some of the issues to address with Afghanistan have been:
- Opium trade
- Afghan military training
- Government corruption
- Education
- Infrastructure
- Afghan economy
and more. Many of these issues are intertwined and can easily affect one another. To address some of these issues there have been many solutions:
- Opium trade -- provide incentives for other crops, push for larger specific use of melons, pomegranates and hemp given the Afghan climate to move farmers away from the Taliban drug trade.
- Afghan military training -- maintain current troops and live up to the 2014 guideline to begin decreasing troops (Finland already has begun the decrease of its forces) but enhance training for Afghan forces.
- Government corruption-- Create an international oversight committee to keep track of different aspects of the government (no enforcement powers) but would publicly call out on corrupt leaders for public reaction and pressure for change.
- Education-- Develop a larger push in the country to decrease illiteracy rates across the country, teach children more about afghan history, and some have even suggested expanding teaching material in local tribal maddrassas.
- Infrastructure-- Some have proposed hiring local afghans to build their own homes, providing jobs and infrastructure creation across the country.
- Afghan economy-- This is tied to the infrastructure I mentioned above and also to the opium trade by developing alternatives to poppy growth for the country's farmers.
There are all still very traditional solutions and while impressive in their detail, I've found to be difficult to do because NATO forces and UN efforts have been trying to do many of these for years.
There were also many other ideas that we simply couldn't accept, and therefore resolutions we couldn't endorse. For example, some nations proposed re-establishing the Afghan army by gathering all tribal fighters into it. This is surely impractical since many of the tribes have fought each other for decades if not hundreds of years. Others have suggested completely banning all maddrassas (Muslim religious schools). Not only is this a repression of freedom of religion, it is also impractical and would garner much opposition by the Afghan people.
My partner and I had so many ideas we considered developing our own resolution however we realized we were better off traveling to the different country blocs and trying to push our ideas into ALL the resolutions, that way we can feel confident in endorse any of them (unless they includes articles like the ones I mentioned in the last paragraph).
Our beliefs to best address key problems in Afghanistan (in addition to the traditional initiatives) are these:
- Micro-financing for women: International statistics on Micro fianancing efforts have shown that men are FAR more likely to spend the money they get from such programs on drugs, alcohol, gambling and other bad uses. Women are almost perfectly likely to re invest the money into a business endeavor that reaps benefits to their children, husband and community. After proposing it to many groups, we gained acceptance of including the micro finance article, however, not specifically for women. We have more work in the next two days and we will be pushing for it specific to women, otherwise we are just throwing away money.
- Afghan natural resources: The U.S D.O.D. estimates that there is 1 trillion dollars worth of oil, gas, and minerals in Afghanistan. We believe more research and development should be done to allow for Afghanistan to take advantage of it, and build its economic backbone. To do so we've proposed to allow different companies of bidding for the research in different areas as well as development, however, we want to keep it highly regulated. Companies that win their bids MUST train and higher local Afghan workers and accept the government tax on their profits. The UN could subsidies the initial costs of research.
- Improve information channels: For this Finland (us!) understands that no proposal initiative or endeavor will be successful without proper information. There is a horribly low amount of information about the Afghan demographic which needs to be improved upon. Only with enough and/or accurate information will ANY international or local initiative be successful. We have proposed that two things: (1) The expansion of the national radio system into rural areas that don't have access to media or live news; the more access of information they have, the better they will be and the more they feel connected to a larger nation. (2) The creation of a central "hub" of statistical information about everything from public health to education to environmental issues. This hub, although accessible to anyone with an internet connection, is mainly targeted toward international organizations working in Afghanistan, NGOs as well as the Afghan government. With more accurate information they will be able to do their jobs much more effectively.
These have been the points that we have been pushing in so far. Many of the people are hard headed, however, we have gotten many of these ideas into many of the proposals. My partner and I have been VERY effective, especially for first year students at this conference for the first time. :)
There is a particular proposal by the United Kingdom that is great. The delegates were VERY open minded and took in everything we suggested and all our ideas, placing them into their proposal. For now, Finland will push for the UK proposal. As time has gone by, Finland has gone into collaboration with the UK, Germany, France and other nations at developing this promising piece to hopefully pass the committee. Many of the other ones institute too larger of a western bias, impose on religious freedoms, or are just not practical.
With that I must go on,
Wish us luck!
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