Topic Area A: State-Sponsored Terrorism

With the beginning of the twenty-first century, the world is witnessing the emergence of a new threat to global peace and stability: terrorism. The United Nations was once concerned with averting further conventional world wars and mitigating the threat of nuclear incidents in a Cold War bipolar system, but now the major international security threat is terrorism. State-sponsored terrorism is a particularly important topic that the Disarmament and International Security Committee should address. We will focus on questions of national sovereignty, deterrence, and definition. In the process the committee will consider the nuclear dimension, avoiding inter-state war over terrorist actors, and mechanisms for ending state sponsorship of terrorist groups and networks.

Definition: Attempting to reach a consensus on what constitutes state-sponsored terrorism will be an important goal of the committee. Without a clear definition it will be difficult to identify and eliminate such activities. The committee will consider whether terrorism is defined by its means or its ends, when it is illegal and whether there are times when it can be considered freedom fighting, and what types of state actions signify sponsorship.

National Sovereignty: Addressing national sovereignty concerns is an essential task facing this committee. The main problem with countering state-sponsored terrorism is that sovereign nations are responsible. The committee must determine what state activities are so egregious that they demand international reprimand or action.

Deterrence: When states are involved in terrorism suddenly there are targets with which to threaten and strike. This form of deterrence does not exist for non-state based terrorism. The committee will consider possible ways to deter states from sponsoring terrorism.

Topic Area B: Iran

Over the last several years, efforts to combat nuclear proliferation have become increasingly focused on Iran. The United States?military action in Iraq was spurred by similar concerns regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction. Possible nuclear programs in Iran further threaten the peace and stability of the Middle East. Therefore, reaching an amicable agreement with Iran about the future of its nuclear ambitions is an important task facing the Disarmament and International Security Committee in the coming months and years. The committee must consider the question of national sovereignty, nuclear energy versus weapons proliferation, and regional stability. In the process the committee will discuss the role of the IAEA, the security of nuclear material and technology and the acceptability of further nuclear proliferation.

National Sovereignty: In deliberating on this topic special attention needs to be given to the balance between respecting national sovereignty and ensuring international security. How far is the UN willing to go to ensure that Iran does not attain nuclear weapons? What sanctions or economic incentives are the nations of the world willing to consider?

Nuclear Proliferation vs. Nuclear Energy: Another important consideration is the difference between nuclear energy and nuclear weaponry. If the committee agrees Iran has the right to pursue nuclear energy technology, how can the global community ensure that Iran doesn抰 secretly manufacture weaponized nuclear material? How can the IAEA be specially prepared to effectively take on this task? How can we avoid another Iraq?

Regional Stability: This is a central aspect of the situation in Iran, one in which the events still unfolding in Iraq also pertain. How can the committee conduct the confidence building measures necessary to avert another war in the region? What actions should be taken to ensure that all parties are satisfied?

Economic and Financial Committee

Topic Area A: Third World Debt Crisis

Third World debt has been a recurrent global problem in the past few decades. Demise of colonialism, corrupt leadership, as well as mismanaged lending and spending by the developed nations have contributed to the third world debt crisis we face today. The debt crisis affects both nation-states and their indigenous populations. Millions of people in third world countries face poor living standards because of their countries?enormous debt payment. Nation-states are constrained to apportion large amount of their output for repayment of debt. Therefore, not enough funds are allocated for factors of development such as health and education.

The Economic and Financial Committee will analyze the causes, the magnitude, and the current policies concerning Third World debt. We will question the effectiveness of current policies and work together to minimize the debt. The Economic and Financial Committee will specifically examine:

1. Standard of Living: How do standards of living compare between developed and undeveloped nations? What methods can we implement in order to improve the standard of living in third world countries?

2. Aid Initiative: The current aid given by the developed nations is insufficient in comparison to the amount of Third World debt. What can be done to increase aid and decrease debt? What are some incentives for the developed nations to contribute to this crisis?

Topic Area B: Digital Divide: Science and Technology Reform in Developing Countries

Scientific and technological discrepancies between developed and developing nations are growing at an escalating rate. Developing nations allocate large amounts of resources for education and research; these nations perceive education as an investment for future welfare. Therefore, these nations are able to develop their human capital and consequently experience economic growth. In contrast, developing nations are unable to apportion large proportions of their resources for human capital. Their human resources decrease as many go abroad seeking better educational opportunities; the developing countries face brain drain. Increasing human capital in developed nations and increasing brain drain in developing nations further enlarges the scientific and technological divide between the two groups of nations.

The Economic and Financial Committee will examine the causes, the current policies, and the future implications regarding scientific and technological discrepancies between developed and developing nations. We will then develop ways to mitigate these discrepancies through possible proposals. These may include:

1. Biological Resources: Utilizing the vast biological resources that are primarily available in developing nations. Surplus of biological resources in these nations will attract human resources from developed nations.

2. Infrastructure: Developing infrastructure will help promote education and research in developing nations. What steps should be taken?

Social, Humanitarian, and Cultural Committee

Topic Area A: Reproductive Health Care: Education, Access and Outcomes

Both population and public health factor into the ongoing struggle to provide for the global community in a world of finite resources. One link between these two factors is the female body in its reproductive capacity and all of the politics that go along with it. From state to state, values and beliefs vary regarding the control of reproduction. However, one commonly accepted notion is that freer access to reproductive health care will limit the numbers of unwanted pregnancies, unhealthy pregnancies, maternal deaths, and other complications. In spite of the widely held assumption that women are solely responsible for reproductive safety, policy change should seek to educate men on their role regarding an issue that has consequences for them as well. SOCHUM faces a multi-faceted challenge in the debates over reproduction because of its hotly contested status, which is likely to increase resistance to education and access in some countries. But when asking the following questions, SOCHUM has in its power the ability to override the more divisive sides of the issue and focus on bringing manageable solutions to the men and women of the international population:

1. Education: How can we maximize exposure to accurate and comprehensive knowledge of reproductive health in all nation-states? How can we encourage the proliferation of this education among both men AND women? How can we institute long-term change in reproductive education policies?
2. Access: How can we ensure that all women in the global community have equal opportunities to control their own reproduction? How can we work with certain governments to make this access more feasible?
3. Outcomes: How should we deal with attempts to dissolve our efforts in education and access? Can we anticipate roadblocks and provide preemptive measures to counteract them?

Topic Area B: Enslavement and Human Trafficking

Trafficking of human beings has increased vastly in frequency in the last decade; it is a practice about which many people harbor misconceptions or know nothing at all. The illicit nature of human exploitation makes it difficult to compile statistics from which to work, but more and more, participants in the process are speaking out and more information is emerging about the plight of trafficked men, women, and children who are then forced into various forms of labor. In fact, one-sixth of forced labor is the result of human trafficking. While women and children are often forced into sexual labor, they are also often forced into slavery along with men who are pushed into the most difficult and dangerous jobs available within a country, working for no money. Many populations are either under the impression that slavery is a thing of the past or they feel they are unable to do anything about the problem because organized crime is involved and more powerful institutions are perpetuating the exploitation. In order to effectively take on trafficking operations and institute change, we must ask the following questions:

1. How do we raise awareness? Which populations are most important for raising awareness: law enforcement, civilians, and the global population in general?
2. How do we eliminate corruption within governments and law enforcement populations that are more complicit in the process of human trafficking?
3. How do we encourage education of citizens so that populations at risk for victimization will know the facts and avoid being exploited?

Special Political and Decolonization Committee

Topic Area A: The Representation of Indigenous and Minority Peoples

Within the inescapable dynamo of globalization, decisions made by world leaders affect the lives of all people around the globe. Even peoples in the most remote locations cannot escape the effects of global politics. These groups face the consequences of globalization without a say in the agenda of world leadership. Indigenous groups in areas of South America and Africa, for example, have only within the last century had true contact with the outside world. They do not understand the ways of, and undoubtedly feel threatened by, the overwhelming power of developed countries. However, the wheels of the world do not stop to bring these groups up to speed. Often, the developed world looks down upon others?損rimitive?ways of existence. Indigenous groups must quickly make Hobson抯 choice梛oin the global market and face cultural destruction or hold out and meet the same fate.

Because of their marginal status, indigenous peoples along with minority groups in other nations face the problem of representation梩hey simply don抰 have any. Their distinct cultures face the threat of melting into global homogeneity. Along the way, the protesting voices of these sub-national groups, many rightly nations by definition, are ignored by national governments. This committee will grapple with group rights梩he right of all distinct groups of individuals to have representation梐nd how these could fit within the current institutional frameworks of governments. How can countries institutionalize accurate representation of indigenous peoples? And does the autonomy of indigenous leadership belong in the international system?

Topic Area B: The Political Future of Iraq

On 9 April 2003, the statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad was symbolically toppled to the ground as his regime fell and Iraq was left without an Iraqi government in control. The United States military assumed responsibility for maintaining security. Even though official power was transferred to the Iraqi Transitional Authority on 28 June 2004 and elections were held under the new Constitution for the Iraqi National Assembly in December 2005, the U.S. still plays an incontestably significant role. Today, violent civil strife remains a constant menace, disrupting order and instilling fear in both innocent civilians and U.S. forces stationed in the country.

The new Iraqi government will doubtless face the challenges of dissension among religious and ethnic groups. As the current centerpiece of the United States?War on Terror, the viable and sustainable political future of Iraq is of the utmost importance. Maintaining security will likely prove be the most difficult yet crucial challenge in ensuring the success of the new government, which in itself has been instituted partly to maintain security and put down terrorist organizations within the country. The world community must come together in offering prescriptions to facilitate the success of what the Constitution of Iraq calls a 揹emocratic, federal, representative republic" in a "multiethnic, multi-religious and multi-sect country.? In the process of state-building, how should Iraq balance the need for security while assuring sustainable governmental and economic development? And what responsibility does the world community have in ensuring the success of democracy in Iraq?

Legal Committee

Topic Area A: Multinational Corporations and International Law

Since the concept first emerged in the 17th century, multinational corporations梑usiness entities based in several different countries engaged in buying and selling goods and services across international borders梙ave had important consequences in world history. Today抯 multinational corporations (MNCs) may not have the power to make war, which Parliament granted the British East India Company in 1670, but they still wield an increasing amount of influence over world affairs, thanks to advances in technologies and the shrinking costs of communications and transportation. Rather than engaging in general trade, today抯 MNCs often focus on a particular manufacture or service and strive for the lowest costs of inputs, especially labor, in developing countries around the world.

Trade opportunities presented by MNCs often translate into benefits for all involved: developing countries, developed countries, and the corporations themselves. However, the rise of MNCs has raised several important issues of international law. Allegations of human rights violations against workers in developing countries have been lodged against several MNCs, and therefore the committee will discuss how international law should address MNCs?treatment of employees. Moreover, MNCs create unique problems of jurisdiction. To what extent do countries in which MNCs operate have legal authority to regulate them (through foreign direct investment regulations, for instance), and what happens when the rights of two such countries collide? Also, what options should international law provide for nations which will be impacted (environmentally or otherwise) by multinational corporations operating in other countries? These questions will be addressed by a Legal Committee deliberation of this topic.

Topic Area B: Reparations and Restitution

On the most direct level, payments of reparations and restitution, made by a government to individual victims of a war or human rights violations at the hands of that government, provide some level of justice to the victims and partially compensate them for the damage they have suffered. On a broader level, however, reparations are also extremely effective in reducing post-conflict tensions in both the short run and the long run. Since the Second World War, for example, German acceptance of responsibility for the Holocaust, prompted in large part by the reparations process, has marked a significant achievement in achieving reconciliation. Japan, in contrast, has resisted paying reparations to the victims of its wartime injustices, and its failure to formally acknowledge them forms an often tempestuous aspect of its relationship with China and Korea.

While reparations and restitution are useful in conflict resolution, as this case study indicates, they are not always easily agreed on. Moreover, the usual pattern of reparations imposed by treaty or by an action of a national government was broken in the 1990s by private individuals?claims against governments and against private organizations (such as Swiss banks for wrongdoings during the Holocaust). The concept of reparations therefore faces serious legal issues. Some of these are recent developments: how valid, for example, are private claims against governments or private entities for reparations? Where should jurisdiction reside for individual cases梟ational governments, international bodies, or some combination of the two? Other problems are inherent in the idea of reparations itself: to what extent can the international community impose the obligation to pay reparations and restitution? How far in the past must a wrong be for individuals?claims for reparations to be invalid? The Legal Committee will face these issues in its discussion of reparations and restitution.

模联团队日程初步安排：

11/19  结清申请费用（支付贾云现金）

11底   预约签证，

11/26  写完position paper（发送文本到贾云信箱）

11/26  结束一切申请事宜（包括NGO）

12/17  学校证明等签证所需材料（联系教务处）

12/24  预订机票、旅馆等（现金支付贾云定金及机票费用）

1月    结清签证费用（自行缴纳签证费用）赴领馆签证

办理ISIC/YHA

2月： 名片印制、服装准备、国家资料搜集等（分工负责）

出发： 2/14早晨=〉2/14早晨到达波士顿

       2/14、15、16、17、18（5晚）住宿Hi-boston hostel

费用预算：申请费             56

          签证              100

          机票(tax include) 900

          酒店（波士顿5晚） 150

          晚餐（波士顿4晚） 40

          交通（波士顿5日） 35

          其他可能性支出    50

          小计            1331

         RMB            10648

会后费用：旅店住宿/每晚      30

（每天）  城市交通            6

          旅游景点套票       20

          午、晚餐           20

          其他可能性支出     15

          小计             91                 

         RMB             728

日常通讯：全球通预存话费  500RMB

城际交通：波士顿-纽约        30

（往返）  波士顿-华盛顿     100

          华盛顿-纽约      不祥