Learning Outcome 06 – Demonstrate engagement with issues of global significance

Middle School MUN@UWC is a conference hosted by our school. The conference in 2020 was from the 17th to the 18th of January. For the first time, I was not a delegate but a deputy chair in the UNESCO Committee – United Nations Educational, Scientific and cultural office.  Our delegates from grade 6 to grade 8 spend two days debating the issues of the rights of indigenous people and doping in major competitive sporting events. All of our delegates spoke at least once; we had many speeches and POIs contributing to fruitful debates.

As a chair, the most preparation starts long before the conference when we are writing our chair reports, information booklets for the delegate about the issue we will be discussing. Through this in-depth research with data and information from various reliable sources, I was able to learn a lot about the issue of doping in international major competitive sporting events. Mostly, the Olympics were talked about since there are the most case studies about this event. Athletes taking drugs to enhance their abilities leads to unfair competitions which could mirror disputes between countries. Furthermore, trainers prescribe medications to their athletes without the sportsmen knowing what they are taking and what the side effects are. These side effects include mental as well as physical illnesses, like depression and strong headaches. Most of these drugs with short term effects have side effects lasting for decades. Additionally, although the athletes are able to be faster, stronger and better, the drugs can lead to distractions causing major accidents, such as in the death of Tom Simpson. He was ill with diarrhoea during the tour de France in 1967 which lead him to collapse and die during the race, later it was found out that his trainers gave him alcohol together with amphetamines which cause the collapse together with overexertion.
Although there are many international and national rules and guidelines established, doping in major competitive sporting events is still a pressing issue. We as chairs were able to observe all the brilliant ideas and diplomatic ways to handle these in a representation of an international committee. Passed resolutions included solutions like decreasing the production of performance-enhancing drugs, social media campaigns against doping along with early school education especially for sport talented children and the observation and reliability of trainers and coaches.
This topic, in particular, was very new to most of the delegates and for around 80% of our committee, it was their first conference ever. The delegates were able to pass 4 plausible resolutions and allowed me to learn a lot while chairing them, it was truly a good experience working together with them and my two co-chairs.