If I wasn’t a fan of flying before, waking up at 4 in the morning to New York City definitely didn’t help. I did manage to catch up on about an hour of sleep on the plane but still went through yesterday pretty exhausted. And after being in NYC for 24 hrs I can honestly say that it feels like a week. The opening ceremonies were highlighted by a speech from former NBA legend Dikembe Mutombo on the importance of the younger generation stepping up to address the global challenges we face. Mr. Mutombo was a bit hard to understand since we were in the back of a very crowded ballroom, but inspirational none the less. He also speaks nine languages!! How many basketball players can say that?
After that, it was on to committee. Although I attended conference last year, this is my first experience in the Security Council. Because there are only 15 delegations on the Security Council as opposed to 192 in a normal committee, I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect in terms of group dynamic. Even before the meeting started, Matt and I managed to network with most of the members and informally discuss our preferences for the agenda—the first topic of discussion for any committee. When the formal session started, it looked like our agenda preference (Responsibility to Protect, then climate change and finally the situation in Afghanistan) could be adopted pretty simply but due to one member state being absent the committee turned into a 50-50 deadlock. After about an hour and a half of heated negotiations, a compromise was finally adopted to address Responsibility to Protect first and switch the order on Afghanistan and climate change. It took a lot of effort, but it definitely felt good to get our priority in the first place on the agenda. Hopefully we’ll start on a working paper today.
- Isaac
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