Arab League leaders admit policy failures
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Youssef Abdelaal /CARAVAN STAFF MOUSSA ON SCREEN: Although the CIMUN banners announced keynote speaker Amr Moussa, he was unable to attend and instead sent a videotaped speech. |
The United States of America deliberately interferes with the United Nations (UN) Security Council, said Hesham Youssef, chief of cabinet for the Arab League’s Secretary General, at the Cairo International Model United Nations (CIMUN) opening ceremony on March 11.
“For the first time in its history, a war erupts and the Security Council does not convene,” Youssef said, referring to the Israeli-Hezbollah war in 2006. According to Youssef , the council refused to convene because the US had thought it was ‘still premature’ to meet.
“It took [the Arab League] three weeks to convince the US to allow the council to convene,” he continued. “And [the US] said, ‘on one condition—there will be zero outcome.”
Addressing AUC faculty and students in addition to 54 delegates from the U.S., Canada, Greece and Belgium, Youssef took Secretary General Amr Moussa’s place at the 20th annual opening of the conference because the Arab League head had a work-related emergency.
“We [the Arab League] would get an F for our effort…From Iraq to Palestine, from Lebanon to Iran, and from Darfur to Somalia, we have failed,” Youssef confessed to the audience.
Youssef, who is an Egyptian and holds a masters degree in economics from AUC, also admitted that the Arab world has a long way to go before it can set its human rights record straight. “But the civil liberties of Arabs on the other side of the world are also an issue,” he added.
Youssef’s address was preceded by a videotaped speech delivered by Moussa from his office at the Arab League headquarters in Cairo, urging CIMUN delegates to “criticize, not only simulate” in their modeling of the UN.
“You have to address the incapacity of the system to meet the 21st century,” he said, referring to the UN’s failure to solve global poverty.
Moussa also pointed out that unexpected issues at the top of the Security Council’s emergencies’ list, such as climate change, need to also have a place in MUN. “The situation has reached a stage where states will disappear, territorial compositions are changing and waves of refugees will plague the international scene,” said Moussa.
The biggest problem, according to Youssef, is ‘public indifference.’ He has his hopes on CIMUN, he said, because it indicates that youth are aware. Walking up to the podium, he said he had “not seen so much enthusiasm since Egypt won the African Cup.”
CIMUN is the largest political model outside of North America and the oldest in the world. It was founded in 1989 by now-retiring Provost Tim Sullivan, who had been asked by students if they ‘can do as well as these Russian guys can do’ on a visit to a Russian MUN during the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Sullivan had had to provide the funding for the activity from his own pocket for the first couple of years. “My reason was this was the best teaching I had ever done. There were no grades and no tests, but everyone was on everyone’s case to get it done, and get it done right,” he said.
Twenty years after its first simulation of the Security Council—then its only council—in the 6th floor of the Hill House, CIMUN simulates seven councils, including the Human Rights Council, the International Court of Justice, and the development and awareness programs.
Once in session, the different councils, in which countries are represented by students from AUC and other universities around the globe, meet to discuss and pass mock legislation on issues such as terrorism, global economic relations, and AIDS. This year’s theme is “Veto the Apathy.”
“Here at home, no one is aware of the water shortage crisis, of the increasing high school drop-out rate, of the landmines,” said Omar El-Oraby, student secretary general of CIMUN. “This is where the purpose of CIMUN lies.”
More than LE 1 million has been raised by the administration for CIMUN, which will have its own building on the new campus.