TritonMUN Day 1!

Today we started off bright and early at 8:45 am at the Price Center where we checked in and then attended opening ceremonies, where we heard from UCSD Provost Ivan Evans of the Sociology Department on the state of democracy in the world today and how important MUN conferences are for creating an informed youth and building diplomatic skills. Everyone then went to committees where they tackled their first topics, starting with opening statements, debate, and resolution writing. 

• In the Special Political and Decolonization Committee, Avi Schlafman delved into the issue of governance in Somalia - its history and what a stable government that meets the needs of so many autonomous regions would look like and how it would function.
• In UNICEF, Lauren Ziment tackled the issue of access to quality education in refugee and displacement camps with the complicating factors of poverty and security. She successfully merged her resolution with another group's and both presented the resolution and fielded questions from fellow delegates.
• In the UN Environment Programme, Sophia Williams and her committee looked at how to develop environmentally sustainable infrastructure in the developing world, where access to funding and resources is limited. 
• In the Organization of American States, Milan Sandhu, as Canada, along with fellow North and South American nations tried to come up with a sustainable reconstruction and development plan for the Caribbean, especially with regards to disaster response to events such as hurricanes and earthquakes.
• In the World Trade Organization, Nikita Nair debated internal reform within the WTO to decrease Global Economic Stratification, and was able to move into the second topic on intellectual property rights, looking at a case study of Dispute Settlement 256. This case involves Trade-Related aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), specifically Qatar's dispute against Bahrain, the UAE and Saudi Arabia for coercive attempts at isolation, while the countries claim they blockaded Qatar due to its funding of terrorist organizations. 
• In the British Petroleum ad-hoc Commission on the Deep-Water Horizon committee, Matthew Wirtz, in the role of Mark Bly, Head of Safety and Operations for BP, sought to confront the environmental and PR disaster that was the 2010 Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico. He and his fellow delegates sought to come up with ways to contain and clean up the oil spill. 
• In the Joint Crisis Committee, which is a historical crisis committee on the Spanish Civil War, Zakary Koenigs joined the Republican group as Juan Garcia Oliver, a prominent Anarchist when Civil War broke out in Spain in 1936. Along with his group comprised of Spanish communists, the Soviet consulate, various heads of Spanish regions and the head of the Spanish army, they have been playing out the Civil War, fighting the opposing Nationalist side, according to their roles and ever-arising crises.

Tomorrow they will have two more sessions, starting at 9:30 am before debate closes at 2:50 and we head to closing ceremonies!