Review of EUROSIMA 2018 and Rapporteur Position in MUN by Efe ÖRENCİK

Hi MUNTurkey.com readers. I am going to share my observation from EUROSIMA 2018 which I attended as a rapporteur. Moreover, I will be giving information about the rapporteur position in MUN conferences. Let’s start! I hope you MUNers will enjoy my 3rd article as well!

As you all know, there are 3 different positions in the executive board of a committee. These are President Chair, Vice-Chair, and Rapporteur. After may MUN conference experience, I decided to experience being Rapporteur in EUROSIMA.

I gathered the definition of Rapporteur from various sources, the first two are from Quora and written by John Zuwasti Curran, works at United Nations and Alvin Loong, Secretary-General of a Model UN Conference.

Let’s begin with Mr. Curran;

”It’s been too long since I went to a Model UN conference in high school, but I can tell you what a rapporteur does at a real UN conference: They sit, listen, take notes, ask probing questions for clarification of proposed language, and gradually shape the outcome document. It is, at once, the most powerful and least powerful role in the outcome room. Your job is to record the consensus of the room, sometimes through a verbal input, as delegates debate proposed language for a draft document; other times, your inputs are both verbal and submitted in written form. Imagine trying to reconcile 40 different complex position statements that, together, make a 3.5-inch binder bulge.

Being a rapporteur requires a lot of cool under pressure. You have to know when to break off a debate by putting brackets around language on which there is disagreement, and move on — and when to insist on slogging through it to yield a consensus.

The role of the rapporteur is powerless in the sense that you can’t bring your own agenda into the room to overtly shape the discussions; yet, in another sense, it’s a very powerful role in that whoever has draft control shapes the outcome document to a large extent.”

Secondly from Alvin Loong,

”In Model UN, a rapporteur is a member of the dais, typically alongside a Chair and/or Director.

Their duties are mostly procedural, such as taking roll call, counting votes, keeping watch over caucus time, and other administrative items like organizing working papers and adding names to a Speakers’ List.

A Chair or Moderator can be a member of the committee or a staff member, and typically moderates debates, rules on points and motions, enforce the rules of procedure and keeps track of speaking time.

A Director largely deals with substantive matters, such as editing Working Papers / Draft Resolutions and determining the scope of a committee’s powers.

This should not be confused with a Special Rapporteur, which is an independent expert called upon by the body or the UN (specifically the UN Human Rights Council).

There are currently 38 Special Rapporteurs, Special Representatives, or Independent Experts, reporting on topics such as Human Rights in Myanmar, Rights of Indigenous Issues, Sexual Orientation, and Gender Identity, and Extrajudicial Summary and Arbitrary Execution. The whole list can be found here: OHCHR | Current mandate holders

And let’s get another tip from UNAUSA.ORG,

Rapporteur: A member of the dais whose duties include keeping the speakers’ list and taking the roll call, as well as assisting in and keeping track of administrative duties in the committee room.

And What I think and how I define being Rapporteur? How to be a good rapporteur and my experience as a rapporteur in the EUROSIMA 2018 conference.

I was in the JCC committee. Our committees’ topic was allies of World War II and we were representing 3 cabinets in this committee. There were the USA, United Allied Command of United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, USSR. I was in the USA cabinet and my position was rapporteur. I preferred EUROSIMA for having another experience in the rapporteur position of the dais because I thought I would gain a lot of new skills regarding MUN. And I saw that you write everything in the committee. It’s a bit hard position. But I highly recommend all MUNers to take part in this position. You will do a summary of all speeches. If you are good at typing on the computer and likes listening to peoples this position, being rapporteur is a perfect job for you.

And now I want to give information about  EUROSIMA 2018.  The new edition of  EUROSIMA conference was held between 20th and 23th of the April. It was held In METU (Middle East Technical University) in Ankara, Turkey. And EUROSIMA is a bit different from other MUN conferences. Actually this conference is a Model European Union conference instead of a Model United Nations Conference. It was a very good and well-designed conference. Their academic team was great. Firstly, it can be definitely stated that EUROSIMA conference is a great conference for beginners of MUN conferences and learn the procedure of the European Parliament and duties and organization of opening and closing ceremonies, social events and their other positions (admin, press and etc.) Their social events were great compared to the first edition of the conference. The participation was very few but all the other parts of the conference were great.

And also in my point of view, the role-playing part in the JCC and the Ottoman Empire committees were very good. In JCC rapporteurs sited behind the committee because they told us there weren’t any technological devices in those years. Chairs in the committee, for example, in the JCC committee in the USA cabinet, explained the whole procedures at the first they before starting. Then the committee proceeded very joyfully. For next year I highly recommend my fellow MUNers to apply to this astonishing conference in order to have a great experience!

Efe ÖRENCİK

The Writer of MUNTurkey.com