BRAMUN 2021

BRAMUN is a Model United Nations (MUN) conference organised by CLIB, the Braga International School, which our school has been taking part in for years. It is not necessarily a very competitive conference, but it is usually where most of our delegates start their MUN path and it is always very fun. This year it was held online due to the pandemic on the 6th, 7th and 8th of October.

On the first day, the opening ceremony took place in which there were speeches from the CLIB MUN coordinator and some of the conference’s main organisers. There was also a very interesting activity about the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals set in 2015 where we got to test our knowledge on issues that are present in the world on a global level and realise how much we actually did not know and become more aware of the actions that are being taken by the UN and its specialised agencies. There was also a speech by the Mayor of Braga about some of the actions that are being taken in the city and how MUN is a very good practice for high school students. This speech was followed by a Q&A session where we got to ask the mayor questions about some topics that we were curious about. Once the opening ceremony was finished, we moved on to opening speeches. Although these were voluntary, a very large part of the delegates decided to present their position on the topics being discussed.

On the second and third days, there was the main focus of the conference, debating clauses. OIS students represented eight different countries, these being the DPRK, Australia, Mexico, South Africa, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Angola. There were three issues being discussed, these being The question of ensuring strong institutions at both international and national level, Ensuring peace and prosperity in Afghanistan and The issue of Freedom of Press/ Speech. While debating these issues we could present clauses as well as amendments, make points of information, present speeches for or against the clauses and vote on these. We made it our club’s goal for every delegate to talk at least once but most of our delegates highly exceeded these expectations.

The conference ended with the closing ceremony where we had a small talent show and the awards were presented. Over half of the OIS students taking part in the conference received awards including Best Delegate awards and Best Young Delegate awards. Although we do not participate in these conferences for the awards, our delegates were very pleased with these results, and we are all very excited to keep on taking part in MUN conferences and hope that all of the other ones go as well as this one did.