Syrian Refugee Crisis
MocoMUN SPECPOLCommittee
Montgomery Blair MUN
Dear Delegates,
Welcome to MocoMUN 2015! My name is Divya Rajagopal and I will be serving as one of your chairs for SPECPOL today. I'm a senior at Montgomery Blair High School in the Magnet program there as well as the President of Blair's Model UN team. When I'm not working on MUN-related things, I'm usually writing and editing for Silver Chips Online, my school's online publication, playing tennis for my school's varsity team, or catching up on sleep.
This committee is one of the six main committees in the General Assembly, also known as the "fourth committee". Special Political and Decolonization Committee, or SPECPOL, deals with a variety of subjects including decolonization, peacemaking, and outer space, as well as refugee and human rights issues. In the UN, it is currently led by the Secretary, Ms. Sonia Elliot.
The topic of discussion today is the Syrian refugee crisis. This issue is both highly publicized by the media and widespread in impact. The former notion means that while researching for this issue, make sure to be aware of media politics – there are many misconceived notions in the news caused by media bias that we should strive to avoid when discussing this topic. The latter indicates that this issue is one that affects most, if not all, countries around the world. Over 12 million Syrians have been forced from their homes due to fighting – many countries have already closed their borders to these refugees or placed quotas on the number they can accept. The UN has to take a definitive stance on addressing the issues that are stemming from the crisis as well as work to create effective resolutions that can prevent future problems.
Since MocoMUN will be the first conference of the year, you can use it as an important tool to prepare for future conferences; however, my co-chair and I both expect you all to prepare well for this conference and get ready to participate in some great discussion and debate. We're looking forward to meeting all of you. Happy researching!
If you have any questions regarding the material in this background guide or about the conference in general, feel free to contact me: [email protected]
Divya Rajagopal
Welcome to MocoMUN 2015! My name is Divya Rajagopal and I will be serving as one of your chairs for SPECPOL today. I'm a senior at Montgomery Blair High School in the Magnet program there as well as the President of Blair's Model UN team. When I'm not working on MUN-related things, I'm usually writing and editing for Silver Chips Online, my school's online publication, playing tennis for my school's varsity team, or catching up on sleep.
This committee is one of the six main committees in the General Assembly, also known as the "fourth committee". Special Political and Decolonization Committee, or SPECPOL, deals with a variety of subjects including decolonization, peacemaking, and outer space, as well as refugee and human rights issues. In the UN, it is currently led by the Secretary, Ms. Sonia Elliot.
The topic of discussion today is the Syrian refugee crisis. This issue is both highly publicized by the media and widespread in impact. The former notion means that while researching for this issue, make sure to be aware of media politics – there are many misconceived notions in the news caused by media bias that we should strive to avoid when discussing this topic. The latter indicates that this issue is one that affects most, if not all, countries around the world. Over 12 million Syrians have been forced from their homes due to fighting – many countries have already closed their borders to these refugees or placed quotas on the number they can accept. The UN has to take a definitive stance on addressing the issues that are stemming from the crisis as well as work to create effective resolutions that can prevent future problems.
Since MocoMUN will be the first conference of the year, you can use it as an important tool to prepare for future conferences; however, my co-chair and I both expect you all to prepare well for this conference and get ready to participate in some great discussion and debate. We're looking forward to meeting all of you. Happy researching!
If you have any questions regarding the material in this background guide or about the conference in general, feel free to contact me: [email protected]
Divya Rajagopal