UNODC

Delegates;

If you weren’t already aware, the research award deadline is February 1st. Tomorrow is February 1st. Your paper must be postmarked February 1st in order to be eligible for a research award. However, if you suddenly found your best and brightest ideas happen to have occurred to you at 1 am last night or… even perhaps feeling that inspiration might strike you at 1 am tonight, then e-mail us directly at unodc.bmun56 (at) gmail.com. We can discuss your options, which may include an extension. Good luck.

Delegates;

I hope your return to school and your week has been a good one. As we here in Berkeley continue our preparations for your upcoming conference, we encourage you to take an active role in your committees by participating on these weblogs. For those of you interested earning research awards and for those of you who seek distinction during our evaluation process for committee awards, we offer you this:

If you participate on these weblogs by posting comments, we will give consideration towards your paper or your performance evaluation in committee. If you have turned in your position paper before the February 1st deadline to be eligible for research awards, then we will first assign any credit towards your paper. Subsequent credit will be assigned towards in committee evaluations.

These comments must be substantial and relevant. An example might of a good comment might be a short paragraph paraphrasing a news event, a link to that news article, and a paragraph or two examining it from your country’s perspective and policy. Another example might be an engaged debate between your delegation and another. You are not strictly limited to those formats, but they serve to give you an idea of what we will be looking for.

Do not flood this weblog in a thinly veiled attempt to win an award. A few excellent comments is by far better than many mediocre ones. Irrelevant or uninformed comments will not count against you, but we will remember.

The most important thing to do before sending your comment is to sign it. At the bottom, sign it with your country and school.

Here is an example: Republic of Berkeley, Smalltown High School.

As always, questions and comments pertaining directly towards this extra credit, our topics, research, and the conference are welcome.

If you are uncomfortable posting these, you may e-mail us directly at unodc.bmun56 (at) gmail.com.

~ Francis

P.S.

This offer only applies to delegates in UNODC, as each chair has discretion over their own committee weblog.  If you’re not a delegate from this committee, but would like to see a similar offer concerning your own committee’s weblog, then I would suggest contacting your chair directly.

In addition, I want to sweeten the pot. Your chairs will be giving the top 5-10 commentators (depending on the number of participants) a small Berkeley memento as a token of acknowledgment towards your efforts here on this weblog, for helping to create a dialogue and community.

Delegates;

It has come to my attention that many of are enjoying your first few days of the spring semester by furiously researching and writing position papers for Berkeley Model UN. I must say that it warms us, your chairs, to know that you’re all putting forth as much heart and effort into this conference as we are. If you were here, you’d certainly see the smile on my face.

Many of you are veterans of many conferences, and will need no further direction in writing your position papers. However, there are many other delegates who will be attending their first conference ever in March at Berkeley Model United Nations. I’m sure that your advisors have given you enough direction on how to formulate a position paper, but perhaps you are unsure what I and my fellow chairs expect from your paper, and what we are looking for in particular.

I would like for you to demonstrate a strong grasp of our topics. The UNODC provides a wealth of information that will be able to give you a good understanding of our topics.

Write about our topic in general, and then write about our topic as it applies to your country. Tell us how your country is affected, and what steps your country is doing to address it. What has your country done that address that issues that is effective? What is not effective? In our topic synopses, we asked questions of you. You can directly discuss these questions, but by no means do you have have a solid answer for them because they are there for your consideration. You may also bring up your own questions. What solutions has your country enacted that might also be effective for the international community? Will these solutions be any better than what the UNODC has already previously proposed?

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The information left in the last comment deserves its own post, so here it is. We are honored to have readers from real UNODC. Thanks for reading.

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For those of you in the San Francisco Bay Area and for those of you who are interested, Berkeley’s Pacific Film Archive will be hosting several films during its Human Rights International Film Festival. It will be held between February 2, 2008 - February 28, 2008. Admission to each feature is $6.50 for Youth and Students, and $9.50 for Adults.

For more information please check out their website at:  http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/filmseries/hrwiff_2008

Here’s a list of the movies from their website:

Saturday, February 2, 2008
6:00 p.m. Everything’s Cool
A “toxic comedy” from Daniel Gold and Judith Helfand (Blue Vinyl) shows that when it comes to global warming, everything’s not cool.

Saturday, February 2, 2008
8:00 p.m. The Unforeseen
Introduced by Teresa Caldeira. Laura Dunn’s case study of a Texas land developer is “a powerful meditation on the destruction of the natural world and the American Dream as it falls victim to the cannibalizing forces of unchecked development.”—Film Society of Lincoln Center

Thursday, February 7, 2008
7:00 p.m. HotHouse
An unprecedented look inside Israeli prisons that function as incubators for the next generation of Palestinian leadership. “Shimon Dotan’s brilliantly constructed, disturbingly provocative film is both a humanizing force and an alarming wake-up call.”—Sundance Film Festival

Sunday, February 10, 2008
5:30 p.m. Strange Culture
Telling the strange tale of artist and alleged “bioterrorist” Steve Kurtz, Lynn Hershman Leeson deconstructs both documentary conventions and post-9/11 paranoia.

Sunday, February 10, 2008
7:05 p.m. City of Photographers
Introduced by Naomi Roht-Arriaza. This look back at a group of brave photojournalists in Santiago under Pinochet offers a universal lesson in the necessity of a free press.

Sunday, February 24, 2008
2:00 p.m. Lumo
Introduced by Patrick Vinck. A nuanced consideration of a too-common phenomenon—the use of rape as a weapon of terror—through the story of one courageous survivor in Congo.

Sunday, February 24, 2008
3:45 p.m. Enemies of Happiness
Introduced by Rachel Shigekane. An enthralling profile of Malalai Joya, a young woman challenging the Afghan political establishment. With short Sari’s Mother.

Maybe I’ll see you there; I’ll be the guy with the Berkeley sweatshirt.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/slaves/

I saw this a couple of years ago, and thought it might provide some insight and a human side to the subject of human trafficking. It was powerful and disturbing, and it was difficult to watch. Unfortunately, I did not find a full version of the video, but excerpts are provided here.
~ Francis

Delagates;

 Here are some interesting links for you to remind you of what goes on in the world today:

CNN Video: Mexican Drug Violence Surges:

http://edition.cnn.com/video/?/video/world/2008/01/08/wian.mexico.drug.violence.cnn

News Article: Vietnamese Man Arrested for Human Trafficking:

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23011635-23109,00.html 

Delegates;

A warm welcome from the chairs of UNODC of the 56th Annual Session of Berkeley Model United Nations. I hope the new year finds you well. I am Francis Nguyen and I have the great honor of chairing your committee this year. Your vice-chairs are Ms. Kalis Kim and Ms. Dana Ginger, who will both be introducing themselves in later posts. It is my hope that this web-log will serve as a valuable forum and resource in your research and preparations for the upcoming conference. I will discussing my expectations for your position papers this upcoming week in later posts, as well as posting links that are relevant to our topics.

Our topics this session are criminal organizations and syndicates and human trafficking; I will be introducing each topic in more depth in later posts. I hope to be able to engage in a discussion with you all through this web-log. I want to remind you all that these topics are real issues in the world. For those of you who look forward to graduating at the end of this spring semester, there will be individuals and organizations on your college campuses whose work is dedicating to address the issues that you have debated in your model un committees. Indeed, many of Berkeley MUN secretariat and alumni have stepped up and out to work or intern for organizations such as the US State Department, The Hague, or the UN in New York. For many of us, our passions in life began with our experiences and research in model un. We will do all that we can to bring that passion with us into your experience this session. Good luck.

~ Francis Nguyen