INFORMATION
Feel free to like and follow us on our Facebook page and Instagram for more information.
What is the United Nations?
The United Nations(UN) is an intergovernmental organization that was established upon the Charter of the United Nations in 1945. The goal of the organization is to promote international law, international security, economic growth, social progression, human rights, civil liberties, political freedom, democracy, as well as sustainable cooperation to achieve world peace worldwide. The UN is the successor of the former League of Nations, which is the first international organization with preserving world peace as its primary goal.
The United Nations had 51 initial member states, then further expanded its size to 193 member states till now. All member states in the UN are sovereign states and enjoy equal rights regardless of population or territorial area. Currently, there are six working languages in the UN, which are Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish respectively. These working languages are also used equally during the administration of the UN.
The UN is composed of six main bodies: the General Assembly, the Security Council, the Economic and Social Council, the UN Secretariat, the International Court of Justice, and the Trusteeship Council (suspended its operations on 1 November 1994). Their main aim is to provide a negotiation platform for member states, take a necessary military intervention, facilitate the growth of international society and global economy, provide information and support for sovereign states, as well as to play as the jurisdiction institution for handling intergovernmental conflicts.
Apart from its institutional goal, the UN also strives to advertise international stability and human rights. For instance, at the anniversary of the United Nations, the UN affirmed 12 action fields for member states to address through multilateral cooperation at the international level, such as more emphasis on women’s rights and enhancing digital economic development.
What is the Model United Nations?
The Model United Nations (MUN or Model UN) is an academic activity held to foster students’ abilities with civic education components. It involves students taking on the roles of diplomatic delegates from different countries, international organisations or other political entities, and conducting simulated meetings under streamlined United Nations (UN) rules of procedure. The conferences are often based on real-world international events and authentic issues of the UN. Participants learn about the process of multilateral diplomacy, enhance communication, cooperation, leadership and critical thinking skills, and broaden their global perspective.
Participation in the Model United Nations has been very rewarding, whether in terms of the early stage of academic preparation, consultation and collaboration during the sessions, or consensus building after the sessions have completed. For example, academic preparation before conferences may improve student’s understanding of the issues and international affairs; presentation of one's country's position may boost student’s public speaking and communication skills; forming a bloc with other delegates may strengthen leadership and cooperation skills within a group; drafting papers may facilitate formal writing and academic research skills since these documents require students to prepare an abundance of information related to the topic and turn their thoughts into black and white.
What are the UN sustainable development goals (SDGs)?
For the commonwealth of humankinds in the world, the United Nations (UN) has adopted a variety of aims by Resolution 70/1 on 25 September 2015 to urge the world to ends poverty, eliminate inequalities among nations in order to build peaceful, justice and inclusive societies and replace the Millennium Development Goals. These goals are known as The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) or the Global Goals, are anticipated to have full implementation of the targets set by 2030.
There are 17 SDGs in total, in this post, we briefly introduced the first 7 goals.
1. No poverty, eradicate poverty in all its forms worldwide.
2. Zero hunger, eliminating hunger, achieving food security, improving nutrition, and promoting sustainable agriculture.
3. Good Health and well-being, ensure healthy lifestyles and promote the wellbeing of people of all ages.
4. Quality education, ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and lifelong learning opportunities for all.
5. Gender Equality, achieving gender equality and female empowerment
6. Clean water and sanitation, providing and sustainably managing water and environmental sanitation for all human kinds.
7. Affordable and clean energy, guaranteeing affordable, reliable and sustainable access to modern energy for everyone.
8. Decent work and economic growth, promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all.
9. Industry, innovation and infrastructure, build disaster-resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialisation, and foster innovation.
10. Reduced inequalities, reducing inequality within and between countries.
11. Sustainable cities and communities, building inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable cities and human settlements, adopting sustainable patterns of consumption and production.
12. Responsible consumption and production, adopting sustainable patterns of consumption and production.
13. Climate action, taking urgent action to address climate change and its impacts.
14. Life below water, the protection and sustainable use of marine resources to promote sustainable development.
15. Life on land, protect, restore and promote the sustainable use of terrestrial habitats, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, halt and reverse land degradation and combat the loss of biodiversity.
16. Peace, justice and strong institutions, create peaceful, inclusive societies for sustainable development, with access to justice for all and effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels.
17. Partnerships for the goals, strengthen the means of implementation and revitalise global partnerships for sustainable development.