Dr. Colvin reported that on Wednesday, December 10, 2014, the St. Stephen's Model UN held a full-day Security Council to consider structure of the UN Security Council and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. At the end of a long and intensive morning session, a resolution was passed revising the membership of the five permanent members with veto powers (England and France were dropped in favor of India and Germany with Brazil as an added sixth), adding a new group of permanent members without veto power (England, France, Japan, Nigeria and South Africa) and expanding the number of rotating members on the Council with mandated regional representation.
The Council then turned to disarmament issues but tabled a resolution to take up the issue of human rights. The discussion of human rights quickly ran aground among multiple disagreements. In both cases, the Council seemed baffled by the arguments of several countries that the UN is unable to enforce policy and therefore should not set policy. The session concluded with wrangling over the complex situation in Syria after (fictional) news of re-alignments of various factions there into two opposing sides: Assad’s forces and allies (Russia, Iran) with tacit support of the US and Gulf oil states, and on the other side, the exploitation of ISIS as a proxy by Israel and Turkey.
The session was admirably run by Felicia Chang as Parliamentarian and Ann Shea once again as Secretary General.
Faculty Sponsors: Chris Colvin, PhD and Sarah Todd
Also participating were:
Valentin Aralkin Shivani Arimilli Patrick Atherton Anthony Atwell Caroline Baizer John Baizer Mahria Baker Isaac Berken Lily Beveridge Catherine Canby Felicia Chang Grace Coates Sarah Elnozahy Harrison Garber Nicholas (Nick) Goldreyer Robert Hartzell Derek Hsu Sofia Hsu Jiayuan Guan Lincoln Jin Anthony Jones Harrison Jones Minsoo Kang Jordan Katz Rachel Kessler Shendo Maccow Abe Masaryk Sarah Masaryk Hayden Mast Hayden McCormick Alexander Mohn Joshua Morgan Adam Moss Stone Mountain Frank Muehleman Sarika Mullapudi Noah Murphy Gavin Nater Thomas O’Donnell Charles Oh Cat Orman Charlie Ozburn Patrick Park Sachi Paul Nikhil Prabala Fernando Qin Wyatt Richards Luca Ring John Sansbury Jack Schiffman Ellie Schlesinger Lisa Schulmeyer Daniel Shaunessy Anne Shea Sydney Starkes Ben Studor Henry Tschurr Kacey Vandervort Thomas Waugh Natalee Weis Spencer Weiss Jonathan Wilkey Maxx Wright Derek Wu Matthew Zachary