AFS sent Upper School student representatives to HenMUN, University of Delaware’s Model United Nations Conference. The conference’s mission is “to provide delegates of all skill levels with the best possible Model United Nations experience: one that is unique, educational, and fun.”

At the conference, AFS student delegates represented the countries of Egypt, Thailand, and Uganda on various committees. Model UN advisor and Upper School History Teacher Matt Slagter told This Week that in DISEC (the Disarmament and International Security Committee) they worked on the issue of IEDs (improvised explosive devices) and their threat to both military and civilian populations both during and after a war. In the committee for the “Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs,” the students focused on how to regulate and benefit from corporate involvement in humanitarian aid and in “SOCHUM” (the Social, Cultural and Humanitarian Committee), they discussed endangered cultures and what role the UN could play in helping to preserve them. Finally, in “SPECPOL” (the Special Political and Decolonization Committee) students talked about human organ trade and whether the UN should step-in with regulations to make it safer or work for economic development that might make the practice disappear altogether.

AFS delegates were involved in dialogues surrounding a multitude of other topics including the impact of food production on climate change, nutritional requirements in food supplements, foreign investment in Africa, the economic problems that are leading the best-educated in some African nations to emigrate and the question of economic cooperation between the nations of the southern hemisphere. In each committee, students discussed the issue, proposed solutions in line with what they had learned about their nation’s position on that issue, and worked to form blocs that would eventually submit a resolution to be voted on by the whole committee.