Dare to dialogue: students strengthen the foundations for change

Elie Samia

This past May, Lebanon’s delegation of five high school students traveled to New York to compete in the Tenth Annual High School Conference organized by the United Nations Association of the U.S. There, Lebanon’s students successfully debated their way to win three diplomacy awards and became one of the top five delegations in the world out of 200 participating groups.

The Model U.N. program provides a way for all the world’s students to participate in a simulation of the U.N. General Assembly, holding mock assemblies and discussion on real issues. The program is as old as the U.N. itself and continues to engage over 400,000 middle school, high school and college students from around the world each year. The program calls on them to step outside of their boundaries, to address the challenges of our global society and to think critically about the varying realities that occupy our world at large. The 2009 conference also marked the first for many other Arab students, who have not taken part in the event before now.

The implications and impact of the Model U.N. are unparalleled. From addressing topics like human rights in Tibet to learning about nuclear weapons proliferation, students not only have the opportunity to partake in educational exercises but also to embark on a journey towards developing an analytical and proactive perspective towards the development of a democratic society. The students who participate gain the opportunity to better analyze their own society by their exposure to other societies and other people, developing a clearer picture of the "whole" in the process. What they experience from their participation is an evolution of perspective, now enriched with a deeper sense of politics and international relations.

What exactly did this mean for our students? All of the students who went to the conference from Lebanon earlier this year learned firsthand the point and the process of collective decision-making and diplomacy. One student, Scarlet Gaby Rahy, noted that the experience “taught us how to interact with people from different cultures and cooperate with them in order to reach a solution.” All of the students realized that they had to consider differing points of view in a way they did not before joining by working with others in such a crowded, bustling setting.

This was accomplished by having all the students at the conference represent a country other than their own; in our students’ case, they needed to learn about the history, culture and positions of Belarus and express those positions accurately when discussing the issues facing the world. By working together to study and write draft resolutions, they also learned the vital skills of persuasion, by taking part in a strenuous series of debates.

Though the world has dealt with the U.N. and the Model U.N. program for decades, these skills still seem to be in short supply when they are needed most. The world around us is unsettled by the very issues discussed at the U.N. and at this conference, like nuclear proliferation and the management of the world’s precious natural resources.

If we expect to face the situations that threaten to harm us all, programs like this can prove influential, by offering more young students to learn and practice the skills that can ameliorate and solve these problems, in their own societies and between them. Kofi Annan, who was the U.N. Secretary General for most of the decade, put it best when he warned of the consequences of keeping the young out. "No one is born a good citizen; no nation is born a democracy," he noted. "Rather, both are processes that continue to evolve over a lifetime. Young people must be included from birth. A society that cuts itself off from its youth severs its lifeline; it is condemned to bleed to death."

* Written for AL ARABIYA. Elie Samia is the Director of Guidance at Lebanese American University’s Byblos Campus and project leader of LAU’s model U.N. program.