Ananya Bhattacharya and Niharika Naveen
At the end of an action-packed four day conference, NYUMUNC’s closing ceremony featured Maher Nasser, Director of the Outreach Division at the United Nations Department of Public Information, as the speaker. Born to two Palestinian refugee parents, Nasser has been schooled by the UN since childhood, and went on to work for them. Having been with them for almost three decades, especially working with the Middle East, Nasser provided intriguing insights into the work of the organization.
Mr. Nasser also spoke about the nature of crises in the real world. Far from being a story of war and violence, conflict and crises often take the form of civil unrest (within countries) involving parties that do not consider themselves bound by international law which they do not negotiate or sign.This requires a different approach to dealing with contentious issues when a large percentage of stakeholders are represented by organizations such as ISIS, Boko Haram and the like.
Speaking to the region, he emphasized that globally, the UN is not only a platform, but also an actor that assesses how things are taking place and implements changes- just like NYUMUNC’s delegates who evaluated and altered crises over the weekend. The many jobs of the UN were replicated by this conference where wars and political conflicts weren’t the only worries- the delegates had everything from health crises to alien invasions thrown at them.
Mr. Nasser spoke about the importance of the subtle but important differences in committee procedures. Resolutions in the United Nations pass through consensus, and not through voting, a difference that creates remarkably different outcome. To illustrate, Mr. Nasser used an example from a recent MUN workshop conducted by his colleague in Japan: passing a resolution to create a pizza for dinner.
“When groups decided by voting, 40% of the people who were ‘vegan’ or ‘couldn’t eat pork’ were left out. When they decided by consensus, they created a pizza that was half cheese and salami, quarter cheese and pepper and quarter vegan cheese,” said Nasser.
With voting, the minority groups interests were not represented in the outcome; but when the resolution passed through consensus (as 80% of resolutions in the UN do) minority groups were proportionally represented and hence had in interest in implementing the policies.
Nasser gave advice on how to closely simulate MUN conferences and wished them success in the future.
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