UN Debating

Saturday saw St. Matthew’s send a team to take part in the mock UN Debate in Bisho. The debate was about human rights and the role that they believed the UN should play. The topic is announced two months before the actual debate and each school is randomly allocated a country they have to play in the debate. St. Matthew’s and their partner school had been allocated Switzerland, which it is fair to say was one of the more difficult countries they could have drawn.

The debate takes the format of a real UN debate, with each country giving an opening speech before formal and informal caucusing commences. Following this the working papers are present, read and voted on before each country is given the opportunity to make a closing speech about how they think the talks have gone.

This is part of a global competition with the winners from this regional round going on to compete in a national competition – the winners whom gets to represent South Africa and take part in an international competition held at the UN headquarters in New York!

The standard of debating was extremely high, I know I am speaking for both myself and Hadrian when I say that we were very impressed. The judges were made up of a panel of three containing a UN delegate from Pretoria and a South African finalist who got to go to New York last year…….. St. Matthew’s sadly did not come in the top three out of the twenty schools in attendance, but they certainly did themselves proud. What was incredible is how much they knew about what was going on worldwide – especially given the lack of internet access they have. It was obvious to the casual observer which schools had internet and which did not and this certainly counted against St. Matthew’s. The mock debate was an amazing event and I wish that my school had taken part in the UK’s equivalent event – if it was anything like this it would have been a very worthwhile experience.

Following the UN debate we had to rush back to school for the infamous Mr and Miss St. Matthew’s – I will let Tim fill you in on these events…….