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VOL. I...No. 3 Copyright © 2016 The LIMUN EYE SUNDAY, 28 FEBRUARY 2016 @LIMUN2016

Sadly the time has come for the delegates to say goodbye to the 17th LIMUN conference, but they shall treasure the expe-rience of this intense weekend for future MUNs.

The delegates, the chairs and the LIMUN teams will reunite in the Great Hall of the Imperial College, where they will have a last chance to go through the values of the United Nations and MUNs before leaving the city.

Ahmad Alhendawi, the most beloved host of the opening ceremony, will come back to sum up the negotiations of the weekend and to congratulate the delegates for the incredible work they did throughout the three-days event. In his speech, he will remind the crowd that the first step in his career was the MUN, which gave a truthful taste of the United Nations by debating and attempting to solve real key issues in the area of global security, environment and human rights.

The closing ceremony will be an occasion to celebrate the achievements made in the committees and to be together be-fore separating on different paths until their next MUN.

The 17th LIMUN was an incredible experience for the qual-ity of the debate and negotiations. It was a moment of refection upon the current challenges that the world of international pol-itics, which requires a young and fresh prospective.

The experience gained at LIMUN will be fundamental in the delegates’ future whether or not they would be working within the United Nations.

The ceremony was also a chance to reward the delegates who distinguished themselves during the negotiations for their high-quality contributions. Carl Giesecke, deputy secre-tary-general of the conference, handed the prizes.

In the end everyone will feel a little bit emotional when they watch the video created by the press team to celebrate the weekend.

The delegate ball, held on Saturday night at the Grand Con-naught Rooms in Covent Garden, was the most important so-cial event of the weekend. The delegates showed their enthusi-asm for the event on Twitter and Instagram. Did you know that the LIMUM had its own very first delegates’ wedding?

It happened on Saturday between two crisis cabinets’ dele-gates. At the ceremony was held in the backroom of the crisis committee at the presence of all the crisis cabinet’s delegates, who clapped at the end of the event.

Eva Earlyta, part of the logistic staff, told that the best part of the even was the registration. ‘We didn’t know what to do, but people were coming from all over the parts and we had to be ready whatever happened.’ But she had most of the fun in putting the flags in the Westminster Central Hall, ‘It was tricky and I didn’t want to upset anyone about the flags order.’

Naz Asrag, another member of the team, said that the LIM-UN was her occasion to see what goes on behind the scenes. ‘As a delegate, you don’t realize how MUN is complicated.’

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International stability threatened with emer-gence of a new world order. On the final day of the conference two delegates from the Special Politi-cal and Decolonization Committee (SPECPOL) approached Carl Giesecke, Deputy Secretary-Gen-eral, to inform the United Nations Secretariat that all powers of the United Nation have been relin-quished and demanded that the United Nations surrender to their new order.

‘We have declared world government. We are acting on behalf of our Supreme Leader King Jong-Un,’ said former DPRK representative, Clau-dia Szymkow.

‘I received a message from Kim Jong-Un in-structing me to change the name of our country from North Korea to our new official title, the Kingdom of Flying Unicorns and Kim Jong-Un,’ she said.

Unicorns have been part of the North Kore-an national cultural identity for many years. In 2012, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) announced that archaeologists in Pyongyang have discovered a unicorn’s lair. Their report said that they had ‘recently reconfirmed’ the lair of one of the unicorns ridden by the ancient Korean King Tongmyong, founder of a kingdom which ruled parts of China and the Korean peninsula from the 3rd century BC to 7th century AD.

This change of name is likely to represent the importance of the unicorn in North Korean cul-ture, based on Kim Jong-Un’s whimsical, imagi-native, and unusual belief system.

‘When we approached the LIMUN Secretariat and other high ranking officials of the UN they merely laughed at us,’ said Ms Szymkow. ‘We will continue informing the press of this change in world government and we will continue encourag-ing the rest of the world to join our order or we will continue to threaten international security and all

the nations who refuse to join our order with the use of our nuclear bombs.’

Jakob Zalesinski, the representative of the Kingdom of Finland, has been positioned as the leader of this new world order in what apparent-ly appears to be controlled by Kim Jong-Un like a string puppet. He explained how this new world order emerged.

‘Ukraine failed to recognise our countries af-ter we changed our name,’ Mr Zalesinski said. ‘Ukraine failed to recognise the nation of Finland as a Kingdom, and they failed to recognise North Korea’s new name as the Kingdom of Flying Uni-corns and Kimg Jong-Un.’

‘We were very displeased with Ukraine’s fail-ure. The situation escalated, and after negotiations took place between our delegates in SPECPOL, and our national leadership.’

Deputy Secretary-General Carl Giesecke, ex-plained ‘the delegates of SPECPOL do not have authority to make these types of decisions. It is laughable that they would fail to understand the extent of their decision-making authority.’

Claudia Szymkow, SPECPOL delegate of the former DPRK, whose government officials once claimed to have discovered a ‘secret’ underground unicorn lair, has announced her country has been renamed.

Ahmad Alhendawi poses for The LIMUN Times in his official photo.

World security threatened by DPRK

LIMUN 2016 Clos-ing Ceremonies takes place today, goodbye to everyone

KEVIN ROCHELONDON, UK

VALERIA VIGILANTELONDON, UK

T H E L I M U N T I M E S

NATO: A question of morals or real action?

The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation appeared to be a very lively committee. Within the very first 40 minutes in session, the delegates were soon able to engage in fi-ery debates, with the chairs giving the floor to more than 10 delegates.

The long question of the Islamic State, also known as “Daesh”, ISIS or ISIL among members of the Alliance, seemed to prevail within the organisation’s priorities. Tur-key’s actions against the rebel PKK Kurdish group were constantly called into question, whereas USA involvement in the region automatically labelled Turkey as a “natural NATO ally”.

The Danish delegation said, ‘This body must recognise and support the Kurdish initiative.’ The delegate questioned Turkish methods in the region and called for the denial of ‘ISIL’s propaganda.’ On the other hand the delegate of Lithuania gave a pas-sionate speech for collective security and peace, remaining open to points of informa-tion. Consequently, Croatia asked about how NATO should proceed with this. Lithuania said that NATO needs to ‘fight fire with fire,’ following the US model, but time elapsed before the delegate finished his thoughts.

Later on, Slovakia declared that the dele-gate shares the views expressed by Italy and Hungary, with particular emphasis on the fact that this conflict impacts all over Eu-rope; it is an economic and political unrest, which goes beyond the border of Turkey and Syria. The French delegation stood up for a united coalition and democratisation of the region.

Finally, Belgium stood up, dismissing all the arguments, saying that NATO has done enough talking, but now it is time for real solution. Amongst Belgium’s proposed arguments were the following: a Turkish ceasefire with PKK, the creation of a re-gional capacity for aviation security, refugee camps, and targeting oil fields to stop the core source fuelling ISIS.

G-20: A question of procedureWhile NATO appeared fully ready to

bomb the living inferno out of the Islam-ic State, a number of G-20 member states seemed to think otherwise. During the first round of debate, the delegate of Saudi Ara-bia stressed the importance of the Saudi’s presence in the G-20 panel, highlighting that Saudi Arabia and Turkey were the only states in the Middle East which were includ-ed in the G-20 committee.

The delegate proceeded, saying that ‘The delegation does not want to see another Iraq or Afghanistan,’ labelling the happenings in those areas as severely catastrophic, both to the economy, but as well as to the socio-po-litical stability of both coutries, Iraq and Af-ghanistan.

The delegation of India, in support of other member-states stated that “fire can-not be fought with fire”, therefore the risks exceeded the benefits of intervention, es-tablishing that there should be no further intervention in the conflict. Certainly, this is incompatible with Lithuania’s point of view, as expressed in NATO.

The delegate of South Korea, however, provided some statistics. So far, there have been more 500,000 victims in Syria, with millions of refugees being constantly relo-cated. These developments, according to the delegate, fuel a process by which global de-velopment is hindered. South Korea called for all great powers to compromise and to tackle this issue together, being the world’s strongest economies.

Nevertheless, it seemed there was a ques-tion of procedure among the delegates. The chair had to clarify the rules of procedure regarding time of speech and the yielding of the floor on at least two occasions within the first rounds of debates. The chairs decided, then, that all questions should be submitted through paper notes in the future. Let us hope that this way, more time will be saved for more fruitful discussions, without inter-rupting debate time.

A2 • INTERNATIONAL NEWS THE LIMUN TIMES • 28 FEBRUARY 2016

COMMITTEE UPDATES COMMITTEE COVERAGE

NATO and G-20 Committee UpdatesTo intervene or not to intervene? That is the question.

PETROS PETRIKKOSLONDON, UK

Austerity v Welfare [2016] IMF PETROS PETRIKKOSLONDON, UK

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) debated on Saturday the conditionality terms of loans to developing countries. Strings attached like austerity measures were not enjoyed by the majority of the develop-ing nations, thus the committee took up on a special mission to work on improving these conditionality terms.

The Press Team went just before the committee finished their un-moderated caucus, putting together a draft resolution. In broad terms, the IMF agreed on the majority of issues, but members were mainly debating minor details throughout the day. The chairs were delighted to share that the International Monetary Fund might be able to ‘save the world financially,’ though it appeared that some delegates shared quite different views.

Lithuania said that NATO needs to ‘fight fire with fire,’ following the US model, but time elapsed before the delegate finished his thoughts.

Comments overheardFavourite quotes from #LIMUN2016

THE LIMUN TIMES NEWS TEAMLONDON, UK

‘For a third-world country, you’re pretty well-developed.’‘I Motion to invade Djibouti with the aid of Greece.’‘Belize let me hold you.’‘I’m Hungary for Djibouti.’‘Motion for a one-on-one unmoderated caucus.’‘I Ecuador you.’‘I want to visit your Netherlands.’‘You can lift my sanctions any day!’‘If I were a gavel, I would bang you all night.’‘I motion to table the Chair.’‘You’re my point of personal inquiry.’‘In Pakistan we like tea - black tea, green tea, white tea. But most of all, we like sovereignty.’‘Can I put missiles in your country?’‘Is that a placard in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?’‘I motion to enlongate the caucus.’

Procedural clarificationICJ receives special instructions on toiletting

VALERIA VIGILANTELONDON, UK

‘The problem with ICJ is that it has a different procedural rules from the other United Nations bodies’ explained Alexia Sideri, chair of the International Court of Justice on the delegates’ lack of knowledge of the procedural rules.

Indeed, in less than an hour, the chairs had to clarify the procedure several times, sometimes even going over the same rules again and again. At some point the chair even questioned whether the delegates have read the rules at all. She had to remind the purpose of the moder-ate caucus: to assess the jurisdiction of the court on the topic.

The debate going on was really intense and beautiful, said the chair, because the delegates are discussing global nuclear armament but from a legal side. However the discussion was slowed down by the delegates who were confused between the formal and informal procedures. For instance, the chairs had to clarify not only the voting procedures twice but also the rules on the order of motion to be voted. As a matter of fact, given the complexity of the topic debated and the representatives’ in-ability to grasp firmly the rules, the talks were expected to last until late.

The chairs foresaw that they would encounter these difficulties not only because the ICJ has different rules but also because they were aware of the overall level of experience. Indeed, ICJ requires a solid le-gal background, a firm grasp of laws and legal procedures.

In order to get the rules experience is necessary and for the majority of the delegates, LIMUN is their first experience as representatives in the ICJ.

To the extent that the chair had to remind the delegates that they were allowed to get out only for a toilet break. Eventually, she decid-ed that they had to notify when they went to toilet because ‘there was something strange going on.’

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