It was a great honour to be a part of the 13th annual SANMUN (Sandefjord and Nesbru Model United Nations) conference held near Oslo on Saturday 12th and Sunday 13th of November. SANMUN is one of the biggest MUN conferences in Norway and welcomed up to 170 delegates from all around Scandinavia with a delegation also coming from the Netherlands. This year’s SANMUN conference was mainly aimed at tackling the global issue of “Development” which is especially relevant for countries which are constantly suffering from violence, conflicts and political instability.

As usual, UWC Red Cross Nordic was represented. This year by a delegation composed of Paula Bausch (Germany), Precious Dlamini (Swaziland) and Lamine Male (Senegal). The delegation was representing the Republic of Iraq in the general assembly and we were on three different committees; the United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC), Disarmament and International Security Committee (DISEC) and Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Committee (SOCHUM).

The topics discussed in the different committees were mainly:

• Measures to prevent the smuggling of migrants
• The question of women’s rights and members of the LGBTQ+ community rights
• Measures to regulate and decrease cybercrime

As delegates, we had several meetings prior to and during the MUN in which we discussed the way in which we would like to approach the conference as a whole. One of the most important aims of these meetings was to represent our country while respecting the position of the current Iraqi government. Therefore, in all committees and in the general assembly, we were contributing to debates and seeking the best resolutions reflecting the ideology of the current Iraqi regime. It was a great opportunity for us as students to be in the shoes of representatives of a nation in the UN. This simulation made us all realize how the real United Nations work and how hard it is to draft resolutions and find general consensus between a large number of states with very different backgrounds and interests.

Although the three of us have had some prior experience in Model United Nations, participating in this year’s SANMUN conference was a truly enlightening experience. We had the opportunity to meet and interact with many other enthusiastic delegates from all over Scandinavia – which was truly amazing. Moreover, since all three of us are going to be chairs for the UWCRCN MUN 2017, we had an opportunity to observe the way SANMUN was conducted and find new interesting ways for improving the upcoming MUN conference which will be hosted at RCN in the New Year.

Overall, SANMUN was a very educative and fun experience. It helped us to improve skills such as public speaking and collaborating with other people in order to put together a resolution. All of us deeply enjoyed every second spent at the conference and wish to have further experience and fun in MUN in the future.

Lamine Male
On behalf of the UWC RCN delegation (Paula Bausch and Precious Dlamini)

UWC Red Cross Nordic would like to express its sadness at the news that Antonin Besse, patron and honorary vice-president of UWC, has passed away and to extend our thanks to his family for his deep commitment to UWC since its founding and, in particular, for his support of students from the Yemen who have studied here at RCN over the past 21 years.

It was Antonin who bought and donated St Donat’s Castle for the founding of Atlantic College back in 1962 and who, later, contributed to the founding of the UWCs in Italy and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Closer to home, a few years ago Alistair, our Deputy Rektor, and I were on the phone to the Yemeni National Committee and were in the process of giving a full report on the Yemeni students on campus at the time – a few minutes into the conversation, something began to dawn on Alistair and he began to mouth to me that ‘Tony from the NC’ was, in fact Antonin Besse II (one of the founding figures of UWC). Highly articulate, erudite and perceptive, Tony was committed to following the progress of Yemeni students on our campus – a phone call from Tony from his flat in Paris was never short and always enjoyable. With support from the British Council, he would carry out selections himself with his motto at the heart of his forging connection between the backgrounds of the students and UWC: ‘From Nowhere to Somewhere’.

He was a great admirer of Tom Gresvig, one of the founding members of Red Cross Nordic, and regretted that he had never found an opportunity to visit our campus.

Our Yemeni students owe him a debt of gratitude and so do all members of our College, past and present, given the rich addition of our Yemeni students to our deliberately diverse community over the years.

Frenchman, Arabist, businessman, educator and friend – we thank you for all that you gave to UWC and educating for peace and a sustainable future.

For more information on Tony’s life, his support of UWC, his father (and his partnership with Kurt Hahn), please click here for an extract from David Sutcliffe’s book ‘Kurt Hahn and the United World Colleges with other founding figures’.