Within three months of the adoption of seventeen sustainable development goals by the world leaders to make the world poverty free and ensure basic rights for all the people across the world, Dhaka University Model UN Association organised the most prestigious Model UN conference in the country, with a view to disseminating the concept of sustainable development goals among the youth and make them aware of the goals that can lead us to a world we have always been aspiring for. Dhaka University National Model UN 2015 conference, popular as DUNMUN took place from December 21 to December 24 this year in the University of Dhaka, under the theme, “Destination 2030: Treasuring the Present for Shaping the Future.”
The four-day-long conference commenced on December 21 with an inauguration ceremony, the vice chancellor of the university Professor AAMS Arefin Siddique presided over as the chief guest and Wahiduzzaman Siddique as the secretary general. The conference was attended by around seven hundred students from several countries including USA, UK, South Korea, India, Sierra Leone, Nepal, and Afghanistan and so on, as delegates, executive board members, and observers. This was the fourth consecutive session of DUNMUN, after three successful conferences in previous years.
In a bid to stimulate the UN General Assembly, DUNMUN consisted of ten committees this year. The inauguration ceremony was followed by a plenary session. After the opening plenary, the committee sessions began.
The high voltage UN Security Council was chaired by Siddhartha Sankar Routh from India where the super powers were in trouble with the agenda on the ongoing crisis in the middle-east. Susma Giri, a Nepalese law student who was representing Iraq emphasised on the end of war in the region as sustainable development and war cannot go arm-in-arm.
This year, DUNMUN included US Senate as a committee which was chaired by Julie Farzana from USA, where the racial prejudice in USA was discussed. James Suh Won, a student from South Korea who was acting as the senator of Kentucky, urged to discourage the use of racist ideologies on mainstream media catered for the young audience.
Fatima Muradi from Afghanistan served as the director of UN Development Programme in DUNMUN 2015. She said, "This is a platform where ambitious, talented young leaders come together to practice negotiations, diplomacy, and politics."
All the committees were successful in bringing out their draft resolution papers through seven committee sessions and one crisis session which were presented in the final plenary session on December 24 where eight of the draft resolutions were passed.
Moreover, the delegates got an opportunity to interact with real life diplomats in the meet the dignitary sessions. Prominent diplomat M Humayun Kabir, and director (United Nations) of Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Shanchita Haque was invited to join the sessions with the delegates where they expressed their thoughts and experience as diplomats.
In addition, this year’s DUNMUN will not be marked only for the discussions and debates, but also for the memorable social nights where bands like Shironamhin and Oblique rocked the campus, along with the students. With a large pool of international participants, more than any MUN conference of the country ever, became a platform of cultural exchange as well.
The vibrant committee sessions, discussions, debates and the hospitality have taken the conference to a new height, and have proven the accuracy of the hashtag it introduced this year, (#ConsistentlyTheBest).