New to BarMUN

Model United Nations was born out of a desire to better understand an organization that attempts to address global issues through international diplomacy. Over the years, the MUN circuit has evolved to include simulations of other “political” bodies that address such issues and approach diplomatic practice in unconventional ways, with the gambit running from intelligence agencies to multi-national corporations. We MUNers have come to realize that there is as much to learn about negotiation, strategy and policy in these simulations as in pure UN committees. Indeed, the tradition of involving the UN at every conference has at times prevented us from assessing the degree to which the UN is in fact useful in solving the problems of modern geopolitics. Hence, rather than run a UN committee out of any sense of obligation, we decided to take the bold step of running exclusively non-UN bodies. We do not know exactly how this experiment will turn out, but we see one of two things happening: delegates will notice the UN’s absence and sense a vacuum of international governance, or delegates will go about their business without the UN ever proving relevant. In either case, we will learn something about the role the UN is and should be playing in the modern world.