The preparation for my Model United Conference (MUN) conference began 2 weeks before the conference itself. On the 13th of September I received my delegation for the conference – An advocate of the USA in the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The case in question was regarding US attacks on Iranian oil platforms during 1987-1988.
As there are two advocates representing one nation per case, I worked with a partner throughout this entire process. For this particular conference, my fellow advocate happened to be a good friend: Thomas Mclaughlin.
In the initial stages of preparation, Tom and I had to research the context of the case, as our ICJ case was based on a real case brought to court in 1993. Although the case may be real, we are not allowed to use any official ICJ documents as our evidence, nor could we copy past arguments word for word. We had to therefore find our own evidence and craft our own arguments.
After acquainting ourselves with the context of the case, Tom and I began researching for reliable and unbiased pieces of evidence which would be able to support are arguments in the conference. This process took numerous hours, done both in school during our MUN training sessions, or at home, done over Skype calls. Although our final documentary manifest consisted of 14 pieces of evidence, Tom and I had finished up with nearly 50 sources of information. These pieces of evidence included documents of treaties (such as the 1955 Treaty of Amity between Iran and the US), news articles, interviews and photographs.
Asides from researching for evidence, Tom and I also needed to find two witnesses for our conference, and create a memoranda which detailed our arguments, prayer for relief and statement of law among other things. Looking for witnesses who had convincing pieces of evidence to bring to the court was not that difficult. Finding people from our school who wouldn’t mind pretending to be witnesses for our case was the tough part. Being a witness in a MUN ICJ case can be quite time-consuming and stressful, without bringing in large benefits to yourself. Many people whom we asked, declined the opportunity as they weren’t prepared to spend time on helping our case. After over nearly an hour of looking, asking and persuading people to become witnesses, we finally found two students and MUN delegates who were not only willing, but keen to help.
Our witnesses were both students in Grade 9 who had only done middle school MUN conferences. Their names were Nimisha Iyer and Areeb Latifi. Thomas and I began prepping them for their roles during our MUN training session only 2 days before the start of our conference. We prepped them by handing them witness transcripts we wrote and giving them relevant information to bring them up to speed regarding our case. Our preparation of Nimisha and Areeb also included conducting mock interviews and cross examination, until we felt they were ready to testify during our conference.
The entire preparation process for the MUNUWC conference was quite a difficult process. Although I achieved all of the learning outcomes during this process, the primary one I will look at in this post are Learning Outcome 2 .
Learning Outcome 2 states that “A new challenge may be an unfamiliar experience, or an extension of an existing one. The newly acquired or developed skills may be shown through experiences that the student has not previously undertaken or through increased expertise in an established area“.
Although I had attended around 4 MUN conferences before the preparation process for this year’s MUNUWC, I had never took part in a ICJ case before. In MUN, the procedures for ICJ are vastly different than that of other committees, as ICJ sought to recreate a courtroom scenario.
For other committees all that is often needed for preparation is understanding of the issue, a short 1 minutes opening speech and some clauses to add to a resolution. ICJ requires immensely more preparation than other committees as we have to produce a Memoranda, Witness Transcript, Documentary Evidence and Stipulations document. Additionally, our opening statement had to be 25 minutes long. Even with Tom and I splitting the opening statement in half, I still had to make a speech for 12 and a half minutes.
During the conference, I thoroughly enjoyed the high level of debate between Tom and I, and the advocates for Iran. We were all analysing every word and argument for flaws, and were prepared to object to any statement that shouldn’t be said. Additionally, I had to be careful with my own word choice to avoid any objections.
While questioning the opposing witnesses, Tom and I formulated an effective strategy. By working in tandem and asking continuous questions and follow ups, and interrupting answers that didn’t help us, we were able to poke holes in their arguments and even cause some slip-ups. In our spare time, we would write new speeches, create new arguments while preparing rebuttals. We had to constantly create new strategies and arguments in order to keep our opposing advocates off guard.
Despite our best efforts, the other advocates won the case, as it ultimately came down to their real-life country actually having more evidence. In the real-life scenario, the US was genuinely going against international law with little evidence to justify their actions. Although I do not want to downplay the good debating from the advocates of Iran, the fact of the matter was Tom and I had to make do with inferior evidence.
Even though we lost the case, we both won the best advocates award. This was an exciting moment for me as this is the highest achievement someone can get in MUN, and I was proud to have won it with Thomas. We had worked really hard for weeks and our efforts paid off.
As evidence for my work, here is a google folder with all our documents.