English
Oxford MUN is an English-speaking Model United Nations event run by Oxford university students. It takes place in the stunning, iconic university city of Oxford over a weekend in November. Students attend this event from all over the world, UK, USA, Spain, Germany, Singapore, Thailand, India to name a few. It should be noted that English is the first language of most of the participants.
Students represent a country in a particular committee and debate, mediate, negotiate and resolve global issues with other countries/delegates. There are several different committees such as, Economic and Finance, UN Women, Environment (COP27), European Court of Human Rights, Future crisis committee, Historic committee among others.
This event has a hugely positive impact on our students, they improve their English language skills, public speaking skills, confidence, critical thinking skills, diplomacy skills and they meet people from all over the world. Consequently, this accumulates in an international atmosphere and helps break down common stereotypes, allowing students to become more open-minded and analyse different perspectives. The event encourages dialogue on key global issues, something which is essential for the future of our planet and international relations. Overall, it is extremely enriching for the students. It is an experience which benefits students for their futures and will no doubt make them stand out when searching for a job.
After two years of online conferences due to the pandemic, this year, we were finally back in Oxford in person! There was great excitement among the students prior to travelling to Oxford.
Cristina Pavo, Marina Barreiro and Rubén Rivas have since reflected on their experience at OXFORDMUN 2022 as evidenced in the following write up:
Last week we had the opportunity to travel to the fabulous city of Oxford. We had the pleasure of attending the Oxford MUN, which is an educational simulation of the United Nations in which students can learn about diplomacy.
Despite being such an exhausting experience, we had a great time learning and getting to meet new people, in addition to that, we got closer as a group and learned more about the people surrounding us. All those experiences helped us to develop our social skills, As IB students, we learned to pursue some of the IB student profile characteristics. We had to investigate and reflect a lot about our country and the position it had within the committee. We also had to be open to new ideas and other ideologies from other students. The trip itself was amazing, we got the chance to visit Oxford. It doesn’t go unnoticed that Oxford is a university city so without a doubt there were a lot of young students, and the city was full of young life.
In a nutshell, as students we really appreciated this awesome experience that was given to us, we would love to attend more MUNS in the future in order to gain have experiences and get to know more people around the world and develop our communication and social skills in English.
