The Model United Nations (MUN) is a simulation of the real United Nations where students have to imitate the debates, held in English, between the various member states of the United Nations. It is a consistently popular extracurricular activity for students from years 4 to 7. MUN offers students the opportunity to learn about the workings of the United Nations ’ Organisation and widen their knowledge of current global affairs, while honing important debating skills.

Among these issues are: disarmament, cloning, terrorism, the Middle-East conflict, international security, economic and financial development, civil rights, labour standards, decolonisation as well as political and legal problems. ESM students have been regular and successful participants in MUN debates both within Germany and throughout Europe. Students from the European School Munich (ESM) may take part in three different MUN conferences.

The participating schools are located in Germany, Belgium, Austria, Turkey, England and Sweden, however, the participants themselves come from all over the world. The MunoM organising committee consists of 10 pupils. Therefore, up to five new pupils join the committee in December. The team meets once a week in order to prepare the conference.

THIMUN Conference is always held in January and takes place in the Netherlands. It is the largest of the MUN Conferences around the world. In most years, the ESM sends around 10 delegates to The Hague. In the last few years they have represented Cyprus, The Holy See, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Lesotho.

Preparations for the THIMUN conference always start in September. During weekly meetings the students are taught how to act in a MUN debate. They learn how to debate and negotiate skilfully and how to write convincing resolutions. The meetings are always held in the afternoon from 16h00 until 17h30. The precise day of the meetings will be decided together with the students.

ESM students, who have been regular and successful participants in MunoM and THIMUN conferences both within Germany and throughout Europe, took part for the first time in a MUNISS conference hosted by the International School Stuttgart in February 2010. This conference focused on the complex issues in and around the Middle East.

The ESM students participated as delegates representing Afghanistan and also as chairs of the individual committees. This entailed a profound research on the appropriate topics. At the same time, it enabled the ESM team of delegates to gain a deeper understanding of these crucial problems and to devise strategies to tackle them.

The Birkerød International Gymnasium hosted a Model United Nations Conference near Copenhagen, Denmark, in 2011. Delegations of ESM students took on the roles of representatives of the People’s Republic of China and the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. The three and a half day conference involved debates, discussions, resolution writing and speech making on United Nations issues as diverse as: strategies to ensure peace, democracy and sustainability in Darfur, to ensure and uphold the human rights of the Tibetan people and the abolishment of private patency on medication combating lethal diseases.

The young delegates from the ESM participated very competently with the challenging dialogue especially those representing China – as they had prepared for many weeks on the issues before attending the conference and found the experience very rewarding.