Ivy League MUN hosts dialogue on global issues

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, piracy, sex trafficking and counter-terrorism were some of the topics that high school students around the world attempted to resolve this weekend at the Ivy League Model United Nations Conference hosted by Penn’s International Affairs Association.

This year’s conference witnessed the largest attendance in ILMUNC’s 27 years. The 2,400 participants hailed from 16 states and nine different countries, including Honduras, Lebanon, Pakistan and India.

There was an especially large number of Chinese students at the conference this year, the third year that ILMUNC partnered with a Model UN organization that runs conferences in China.

Every year, ILMUNC fundraises for a charity through the Franklin Legacy Program. This year, they raised over $2000 for Invisible Children, an organization helping children in Northern Uganda, Secretary General Zach Stone said.

Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer of Invisible Children Ben Keesey traveled from California to serve as keynote speaker for the conference. Other speakers included four Penn professors and Deborah Perelmuter, who works for the United States Treasury and spoke to delegates on the International Monetary Fund committee.

High school sophomore and delegate Ben Fogel — who studies at Friends Central High School — participated in ILMUNC because he had heard good things about the conference and is interested in politics and diplomacy. He said that it was a challenging but rewarding experience.

“It was interesting to see how people who represented so many different nationalities get together. These international issues are debated every day, and it’s good that the future generation is voicing their opinions on how they should and could be solved,” he said.

Nitya Sivakumar, a senior at West Windsor-Plainsboro High School-North Campus, won the Best Delegate award at the conference. It is her fourth ILMUNC conference. She cited working with her peers as one of the most memorable moments of the Model UN experience.

“Every year, I make so many friends from Puerto Rico, China and India and get really close with them, even if it’s working on a position paper at two in the morning. These friendships last,” she said.

This year’s conference — which was staffed by 250 Penn students — also included new features such as environmentallyfriendly initiatives and interactive online training seminars.

For the first time, there were recycling bins in every committee room. The staff also developed a printing template for all the documents with thinner margins and smaller fonts to save paper.

The IAA also hosts the University of Pennsylvania Model United Nations Conference, one of the world’s top collegiate conferences, and the Pennsylvania International Relations Conference to educate West Philadelphia high school students on international relations.

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