By Zahra Mahmood 11G, Chair of the Political Committee. 

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the NOTMUN (Notting Hill Model United Nations) was held online this year for the first time in history!

The debating reps worked together to allocate countries and teams to take part in the conference. The conference consisted of around 33 students and 11 different countries. There were three committee questions chosen to debate, all including issues relevant to society today. The political committee discussed the discrimination of ethnic minorities globally, the human rights committee discussed the question of granting all humans unfiltered access to the internet and the economics committee discussed the gender pay gap in offices globally. Students started the conference by preparing some controversial resolutions for their countries as well as outlining their policies and views as a country. In the political committee, we started lobbying – immediately grouping countries that were allies. Feedback said that the students loved getting to delve into their countries’ views and talking to other countries to establish a common goal. All resolutions put together were exciting and sophisticated meaning the debates started off intensely. 

We launched straight into debating the chosen resolutions which sparked conflict amongst the countries and some very passionate arguments!

We continued debating the resolutions until all counties had exhausted their points and we moved into the voting procedure. As chair of the political committee, I was very surprised that for the first resolution we had a split vote and we continued to debate until we came to a conclusion that satisfied the vote. After all students had taken part in a morning of fruitful, intellectually stimulating and fun debates, we mixed everyone together for the General Assembly.

Despite the various technical issues, we persevered and announced the GA problem for the counties to solve. The issue was as follows: Putin’s senior adviser Vladislav Yuryevich Surkov has been assassinated by an American registered gun. The problem presented caused great excitement and controversy among the countries and the students split into two groups: Russia vs America to come up with their resolutions. The resolutions presented were well-crafted and very creative!

For the rest of the day, we gathered together to debate the resolutions given until we passed Russia’s resolution! The day ended with everyone sharing their favorite memories from the day including the heated discussions and all the fun comments and remarks from different countries throughout the day! 

Overall, the very first remote NOTMUN was great fun for all the students involved. Feedback suggested the students would love to do another one in the future and that they thoroughly enjoyed the day. They found the discussions stimulating and loved learning about their different countries and their views which they admitted were very different to their own! The day was a great success!