The 2021 Honourable Mention Delegation Award of the National Model United Nations has been awarded to students from ESCP Business School’s London Campus, representing Denmark in the global competition.
Due to the uncertainty caused by the global pandemic, this year’s National Model United Nations New York Conference 2021 was held virtually from 3rd to 7th and 10th to 14th April.
ESCP participation at this annual event has been entirely student-led, with on-campus Call On’U societies recruiting, training and selecting their final delegations each year. This year, students from the School’s top-ranked Master in Management and Bachelor in Management (BSc) programmes attended.
The winning team came from Call On’U London lead by Rania Hasnaoui Amri and Matteo Gambino. The School-wide diplomacy association of ESCP has over one hundred members and is active at five of its six campuses (Berlin, London, Paris, Madrid and Turin). During the preparation for the event and the main challenge itself, the students sharpened their negotiation and collaboration skills and showed great adaptability to the virtual setting of the conference.
NMUN, the world's largest and oldest continuous university-level Model UN annually draws participants from more than 130 UN Member States to address current global issues. Their learning programmes provide students with a forum to hone skills in diplomacy, negotiation, critical thinking, compromise, public speaking, writing and research. Students benefit from the formal association with the United Nations Department of Global Communications and utilise simulation procedural rules developed in the 1990s with the UN Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR). The New York conferences culminate at UN Headquarters with thousands of students in attendance.
This year, the conference hosted 22 simulated UN committees. Outside conference sessions, delegates from more than 126 UN Member States took advantage of virtual opportunities at Permanent Missions to the UN and the United Nations itself. Conference features included interactions with Secretariat members and sessions held at UN Headquarters, this year replaced by a guided virtual UN tour.
Rania Hasnaoui Amr said: “Participating in the NMUN has allowed me to broaden my view of some of the world's challenges and to get an idea of how to tackle them in a more effective and sustainable way.”
Matteo Gambino said: "Having faced many challenges in the last year, this amazing group has demonstrated that hard work and motivation always pay off. Winning an award is an achievement, but what I'm even happier about is the progress that the group has made. The whole team has done a great job, constantly improving and working on their skills simulation after simulation, week after week. Congrats everyone!”
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