By Brendan Raleigh
Round Table reporter

Frederick County’s sixth annual Model United Nations simulation took place on March 19. Students from schools in Frederick, Washington, and Montgomery County gathered at Hood College to debate and devise solutions for world issues.

Each participant was assigned a different country and was given the responsibility of representing his/her nation’s view on the chosen subject.  Members prepared for the simulation by researching their country and drafting position papers summarizing their views.

Delegates were divided into two groups. Most were placed in the General Assembly to deal with the modern issue of Nuclear Disarmament. Fifteen others recreated the United Nations’ 1994 Security Council to decide which actions should be taken by the international community in regard to the genocide in the East African country of Rwanda.

Karl Helmold, the MHS advisor to the Model United Nations Club offered his commentary on the meeting, saying, “It opens your eyes to things that happen around the world. Students get a new perspective on both current and past events on a global scale.”

“Model U.N. has done a good job to get people talking and understanding the views of others. It exposes students to subjects that they may have been ignant [sic] to before,” said MHS junior Justin Gumas, who represented the country of Greece.

The General Assembly passed two resolutions by the end of the day. The first, written and proposed largely by African nations, required all countries to take clear and definitive stances on nuclear technologies. This was clearly directed at the nation of Israel, with one clause specifically calling out the country’s indefinite policy towards nuclear weapons.

The second prohibited the trading and testing of nuclear arms and used economic benefits to encourage nuclear arms reductions.

The Security Council’s resolution deployed U.N. peacekeepers to the area of conflict and planned for the construction of safe havens within Rwanda.

When asked about the resolutions’ applicability to the real world, MHS junior Matthew Gabb, who represented the Security Council’s United Kingdom, said, “They have to be, to an extent, because the students have to research their countries pretty thoroughly beforehand. The organization of the simulation lends itself to having realistic solutions.”