After an absence of few years, French International School (FIS) has made a strong comeback at the HKMUN Conference 2005. Already from May 2004, I have been preparing to restart the MUN at our school. Ms. Lawton, Mr. Heaton and Ms. Mathai have then approved me to start a team. As none of the students have had previous experience, we started only with this year’s L6 students, so as to establish MUN again in the school, and expand it to other grades in the future years.

In HKMUN, there are 5 Topics for debate each year, and each requires 2 speakers. In L6, we established a team of 9 delegates. In order to have a balanced team, we took a vote to establish our 5 speakers and 4 researchers. The speakers for this year were Daryl, Maura, Edith, Shu Wai and I. Our researchers’ team consisted of Ben, Gareth, Pia and Alexandra. We started meeting every Monday lunch to discuss and prepare for the HKMUN.

The first HKMUN meeting was held on November 13. Most of us were nervous and tense, not only because it was the first meeting, but also because the countries would be allocated to schools on this day. In the GSIS auditorium, the first three topics were introduced to us. Then, 34 countries were allocated to the 20 schools. Depending on the size of the school and experience, each school was allocated one to two countries. We were overjoyed when it was announced that FIS will be representing Japan, one of the world’s most important countries.

This year’s first three topics for debate were the following:

• Indigenous People (Rights and protection of minority cultures in countries)
• Health Care and Intellectual Property Rights (Should we have expensive copyrighted drugs that stimulate research or cheap drugs to cure the poor people of the world?)
• Pre-emptive Intervention and International Law (Was USA justified in invading Iraq? Is the UN effective enough in solving world affairs?)

The next topic, “Peace in the Middle East” was announced at the caucus meeting on 29 th January at West Island School. The final topic was a crisis announced just one day before the debate, and it was the “North Korean Nuclear Crisis”.

All countries had to write position papers. The countries which had strong positions on the issues then wrote resolutions. Delegates got together on the 2 practice sessions to discuss ideas and find countries to ally with, possibly resolutions to support. The HKMUN committee then chose one resolution for each topic, which was to be debated on at the Final HKMUN Conference on Friday and Saturday, 4 th and 5 th of March.

The Final Conference was a busy two day event taking place at the West Island School Auditorium. Each debate lasted approximately 2 to 3 hours. Countries debated the resolution selected, either supporting it or negating it. Most countries had speeches, and after each speech, other countries questioned the speaking country. Then, at the end of the debate, a vote took place to determine whether or not the resolution will pass the MUN General Assembly.

Everybody’s hard work was then rewarded by a buffet dinner at the Cricket Club on the Saturday evening. A short edited video was presented and a MUN newspaper was distributed. It was also an excellent opportunity to talk to the new people we have met during the conference.

This year’s MUN at FIS finished with a sample MUN debate presentation for the lower forms on Wednesday, 27 th March. Although it was hard work, the successful FIS team of 9 delegates had an outstanding performance at the HKMUN 2005. I would like to congratulate all the delegates and thank Ms. Lawton, Mr. Heaton and Ms. Mathai for their support. I would also like to strongly encourage any interested students to join the MUN team next year.

Tomas Vacek
Leader of FIS MUN Team
2005