On January 3rd and 4th the conference "Regio MUN Basel" took place for the 13th time at the University of Basel, a conference primarily designed for high school students to explore how the UN works for their first time. Two of our members from MUN Bern had the opportunity to join this conference as chairs.
Exactly at 8:15 am the assembly hall of the University of Basel filled with curious faces here to discuss, debate and have fun for the next two days. After a warm welcome by MUN Basel; Katia Christ, a member of the national council, held a speech and addressed some of the issues our society is facing and the challenges which are still ahead of us.
Having heard this input, it was time for the delegates to start discussing their allocated topics, some issues already mentioned in the speech, some yet to be brought up. For this five different committees composed of approximately 20 member states, which were represented by two or three students from different high schools of the cantons Basel-Stadt and Basel-Land were hosted covering matters such as forestry, digital surveillance, climate refugees, nuclear energy and the death penalty. But before handing the stage over to the high school students, every committee had the chance to attend a presentation by an expert on their topic, to help them along in debating. One of those experts was Silvano Sofia, a senior political affairs officer at the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA). After this last encouragement, the students took over to hold their prepared opening speeches, argue their countries position on the topic and thus start the discussions for the coming two days with the goal of finding a common solution. Even though this is far from easy to accomplish, all committees managed to agree on a resolution showing that progress and international cooperation are possible. Ensuing the fruitful discussions, it was almost time to go home. But just before the delegates left to go back to their daily business, the closing ceremony awarded the best of them for their hard work and their successful debates.
It was great to see so many bright and interested minds discussing the issues our world faces. We hope the delegates enjoyed the conference as much as we did and we are looking forward to the next conferences ahead of us.