General Assembly of UN agrees on the final resolution of the poverty issue

Rome, 11-10/03/2013 – The second day of session of the General Assembly took place in the beautiful scenario of Luiss Guido Carli University. The delegates continued working on the topics of poverty and hunger, presenting their positions in their speeches; unlike the day before, countries like Azerbaijan, Japan, Sweden , Slovenia and Gabon finally had the chance to speak.

Later in the morning, the General Assembly had the honor to have as guest the Italian Minister of Environment, Land and Sea Corrado Clini. The Minister presented to the Assembly the project of Millennium Development Goals focusing on sustainable development. He spoke of green global economy, that consists of the efficient and respectful use of natural and energy sources. He wishes for a “new Global Partnership” between developed and emerging economies in order to put into action a sustainable development. He agrees with the fact that countries should work together towards the improvement of technologies in the developing world: an example of this is Brazil, where European, American and local industries cooperate as partners. 

 

New world economies are emerging, countries, like China, demanding to be protagonists in world trade , but all this has to be regulated. The challenge of the next years is thus to set new rules in the World Trade Organization. 

 

Meanwhile, always with the aim of keeping an eye on current international politics, France 24 tried to investigate on the North Korean situation concerning their nuclear program. However, the delegation has chosen not to comment on the issue. 

 

On the 9^th March, Kenya saw the victory of Uhuru Kenyatta. The new president is accused by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity, including murder and persecution. The delegation hopes this will not influence the position of the country within the UN, and declared to be satisfied with the days of the elections, during which no major violent protests happened. 

 

The third day of session of the General Assembly started with Italy calling for a minute of silence to commemorate the victims of a kidnapping in Nigeria. After one month of detention, Franco Lamolinara, an Italian citizen, was killed along with Chris McManus, an English citizen. 

 

After that, the morning session of the works was focused on the motions made to get to the final resolution of the Topic A: the poverty issue. The resolution saw the light at 4 pm when, after several hours of attempts to modify the draft, a large majority voted for it to become an official document.

At the end, the Chairman of the General Assembly, Cesar Briceno, congratulated the delegates for having been so cooperative. He expected it to happen despite the fact that it is not easy to get all the delegations to agree, as the GA is a very large committee compared to the others. He finally added that he wished the works on Topic B (Hunger) would be as satisfactory as those of Topic A, in spite the lack of time.

Margherita Mascagni, Ilaria Quattrone and Damiano Miraglia Raineri (France 24)

RomeMUN NEWS - 10th of March

Weekend at RomeMUN 2013: a melting pot of ideas

Rome, 11^th March – During the weekend all committees and networks were working at Luiss University, Viale Romania campus. Topics have been hotly debated, in order to issue resolutions. In the meanwhile, guests kept on arriving and intervening in the meetings. The most important one was the Italian Minister for the Environment, Corrado Clini, who gave an informative and inspiring speech to the General Assembly and the UNEP.

 

CNN International has been granted an interview with Minister Clini. He felt that it was a great opportunity to talk to RomeMUN delegates, make the youth aware of the environmental issues and the developing goals, and eventually inspire the audience to make a global impact. He also stressed that rather than limiting the environmental contribution to a specific country, for example Italy, it is more crucial to focus on a global scale.

 

The journalists too had the chance to meet some experts. They first listened to Emanuela Del Re, a professor and freelance reporter with long-term career in conflict zones. She gave some hints about this profession, for example, the fact that you cannot always rely on statistics, because governments often ideologically distort them. She focused on the various kinds of interviews: they can either be focused on a single topic, or about a personal history. In this last case, the journalist needs to be very careful and patient, in order not to be too intrusive or direct. Her speech was followed by another workshop, lead by Eric Salerno, former Middle East correspondent for the Italian newspaper Il Messaggero.

 

Concerning the UNEP committee specifically, its Chair never stopped being optimist about the advancement of resolutions. Indeed, regarding topic 7A, two drafts have been issued. Italy, France, Germany and People’s Republic of China supported one of these, while the Commonwealth of Australia, Argentine Republic and Chile produced the other one. Saturday at the end of the day the two drafts were fused in a single proposal concerning the incorporation of sustainable development in national policies and reverse the loss of environmental resources, which was approved by acclamation the morning after. Safe drinking water issues and basic sanitation were discussed afterwards. “It was a very short but intense session”, stated the Chair.

 

Ludovica Buri, Sofia Franzoso, Melania Sebastiani, Jalila Dobere, Anahit Arzoyan, Yiyang Lang and Céline Schoen, for CNN International. 

RomeMUN 2013- 1200 young people to act as world leaders

Rome (March 7, 2013)-- 1,200 young people from all over the world will assume the role of the UN member states representatives to discuss issues of international importance at the fourth edition of Rome Model United Nations (RomeMUN), opening today in the Plenary Hall of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

The participants, coming from 108 different countries, will debate topics like the fight against hunger and poverty, women's rights, issues related to sustainable development and the right to basic education for all and will have the opportunity to meet leading experts of the national and international panorama: Corrado Clini, Environment Minister in the Monti cabinet, Eve Crowley, FAO Deputy Director General for Gender, Equity and Rural Employment, Stefano Vella, Director of Department of Medicine Institute of Health, Luis Jimenez-McInnis, Special Adviser to IFAD President, and Staffan de Mistura, Under-Secretary of State in the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The event is sponsored by the UN agencies in the agro-food pole in Rome: FAO, IFAD and the World Food Programme, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Representation of the European Commission in Italy, some Italian regions, and was made possible thanks to the invaluable contribution of many private entities.

The Giovani nel Mondo Association, together with other sponsors like Education First, Bonduelle, Giorgio Tesi Vivai and Hotel Villa Mercede, put at stake 100 scholarships to facilitate the participation of young people with great resumes, who otherwise would not have been able to attend the event.

This year's edition is going to evolve around the Millennium  Development Goals, the eight international development targets aimed at encouraging development by improving social and economic conditions in the world's poorest countries.

About half of the participants are from abroad (from Afghanistan to Egypt, Ghana, Brazil, Uzbekistan and Nicaragua) and are united in their desire to be the leading actors of RomeMUN, experience the simulation to the full, reach agreements and solutions to problems that the big actors of the international diplomacy struggle to solve, learn each other, make friends, share experiences and dreams.

The delegates' activity, the workshops and the debates will be described and documented by other young students who will assume the role of journalists and reproduce the work of some major international networks as CNN, BBC, RaiNews, Al Jazeera, France 24, Russia Today.

Summary of the program and conference venues:

7 March - from 9.00 to 17.30 FAO, Viale delle Terme di Caracalla

8 March - from 9.30 to 19.00 Luiss, Center of American Studies, Hall of the Parliamentary Groups

9 March - from 9.30 to 19.00 Luiss Guido Carli, Viale Romania 32

10 March - from 9.30 to 19.00 Luiss Guido Carli, Viale Romania 32

11 March - from 9.00 to 13.30 Eataly, Piazzale XII ottobre 1492

Giovani nel Mondo Press Office