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Table of Contents
For most of you, this will be your first Model United Nations experience. I hope that it will be an enjoyable one. You will all be delegates to the General Assembly, meaning you are a representative of your country to this committee. What follows is a description of the General Assembly, its place in the United Nations and the individual powers of the delegate.
GENERAL ASSEMBLY. The General Assembly or GA is the only organ of the six United Nations’ organs that has representation from every member nation. Each member nation has one vote; no nation no matter how big or small holds any more or less power than any other nation in the GA. The GA makes suggestions and proposals, but the GA cannot require that any nation do anything and it cannot punish a nation. In other words, the GA can make suggestions or set up certain programs but has no way of making other nations go along with these decisions. The GA does make decisions on budgetary matters, admissions of new members and recommendations on peace and security; these decisions require a two-thirds majority. Less important decisions or procedural matters require only a simple majority to pass or fail.
According to the United Nations Charter, the General Assembly has several functions and powers. One of the more important ones is "to initiate studies and make recommendations to promote international political co-operation, the development and [digestion] of international law; the realization of human rights and fundamental freedoms for all and international collaboration in the economic, social, cultural, educational and health fields." (Basic Facts About The United Nations, pg. 5) This means that one of the jobs of the General Assembly is give suggestions that will help nations to get along, develop rules for nations, to give suggestions for the development of social programs to help the people of the world.
In your committee, you will be discussing the education of women. Each of you will represent a member nation. As such, you will take on the opinions and views of that nation rather then your own. As a delegate to the United Nations General Assembly, you have only one vote, equal to all the other votes in that committee. This means the delegate of a nation such as Djibouti (believe it or not a real nation) has to be listened to and weighed in each delegates mind just as heavily as the United States delegate does.
Each delegate will also receive a list of the rules of procedure. This list will describe to the individual delegate what and how they can act in the committee. It is helpful if the list is looked over before the conference day. In this way, you will be prepared to participate fully in the committee.
It is up to you, the delegates of the committee, to come up with a resolution dealing with the topic of educating females around the world. A resolution is a proposed solution that in this case, will probably contain several different things that a nation could do to deal with female education. Each resolution will be debated and eventually, a vote will be called and a resolution will be voted upon. With any luck and a whole lot of work, a successful resolution will be passed. It is important to keep in mind that every member nation is not required to follow the resolution, however the General Assembly can recommend that the Security Council take some form of action against any such nations. The difficulty is that this committee must take into consideration the fact that governments around the world have different opinions on what the role of women should be.
Throughout most of history, formal education has been predominately provided to the male gender, while the females have been forced to the home-life. Around the beginning of the twentieth century, a change began to take place around the world. Females started to be considered equal to males. As such, there was an attempt to provide equal education. This attempt, however, was not taking place in all the nations of the world.
For the first half of the century, the world was mostly owned by the European countries such as United Kingdom, France, Portugal, and Spain. These were the great colonizers. While equality was aimed for among their citizens, it was neglected among the native peoples in the colonies. The governments of the colonizers simply did not fund equal education for males and females.
In addition to this, many cultures value males more than females, to the point where infant females are killed in some cultures. When the world began the process of de-colonization after W.W.II, the newly formed governments had limited funds. With this limited amount of money, many chose to fund male education while leaving females in their traditional place of the home.
With the passing of time, many of these governments have tried to balance out their education. The problem of funding still arises quite often as well as "backwoods" opposition. That is to say, many traditionalists still feel a woman’s place is in the home. Some governments, such as Afghanistan, have instituted regimes of extreme fundamentalist religious leaders. In countries like Afghanistan, and others countries like it, education of women has all but disappeared, or it is kept separate and different than the education given to males.
Information That Might be Helpful in Determining a Nation’s Position.
Bloc Positions:
The United Nations member nations have divided themselves up into "blocs" of nations with similar views on issues. The blocs are:
1. The Western Bloc, consisting of the US, Japan, any Western European nation, and other nations consisting of Western European descendents
2. The Communist bloc consisting of all communist nations,
3. The Former USSR bloc consisting of Russia and most Eastern European nations who were run by Communist rulers until the early 1990s.
4. The Third World or Less Developed Countries these are the countries that are not yet fully industrialized, Latin & South American and African nations
5. The Middle East bloc these are those nations located in the Middle East, the oil nations, and the Arab nations
**A note to the wise, just because your bloc feels one way does not mean your nation will. This is just a rough guide to help you out.
The Western Bloc primarily is for equal education. However, funding may be required of them and not every Western nation may be willing to contribute significant amounts.
The Communist bloc is for equal education among the sexes. This is evident in their literacy rate scores. They, for the most part, are very unlikely to provide the funds requested by the Less Developed Countries. There are only a handful of communist nations on Earth (Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, Laos) and they tend to be poor themselves.
The former USSR bloc or Eastern European bloc has excellent literacy rates mostly due to the former system of communism. The current governments are also in favor of equal education. The major problem lies within the fact that the economies of the se nations have recently been in turmoil. The failing economies do not allow these nations to deliver any significant aid packages. There is also a question of whether or not these nations may require aid in the future to maintain their current level of education.
Majorities of the Third World or Less Developed Countries (LDCs) have poor all around educational systems. These nations will require the most aid to equalize the educational system among the sexes. It is also these nations where culture dictates that women do not necessarily need a formal education.
Some countries of The Middle East bloc or Arab bloc have had huge success in increasing not only the education of women, but also the total education since the colonial powers were disbanded. Most of this success is due to the money brought in from the oil producing nations. Those nations without oil, such as North Yemen, have increased very little. Other reasons that some nations have not equalized the education of males and females are that the ruling regime is a fundamentalist Islamic regime. The three highest growths in female enrollment among the Arab nations were Bahrain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. All three of these nations make a lot of money from the production of oil.
A note on the use of the chart on the following pages:
The following chart is a chart of the literacy rates of the nations on this committee. It is intended to give the delegates an idea of the state of education in their nations. It is not intended to show whether your nation believes in equal education. For the most part, that information can be determined through a combination of the chart, the bloc positions above and determination of what is the position of women in your culture.
A note on the following articles and additional research:
Most of the articles have been left in their original form, while I did remove some materials from some and paraphrased parts of others to both condense them and make them easier to understand. I have also included a list of which articles should be helpful to whom, but all of them should be read by all of the delegates. You may wish to do some additional research if you have trouble coming up with your nation's position. It is also recommended, because all new information presented by delegates is not only useful in the debate but also adds to it. Some suggestions for researching are to use a search tool on the internet and enter your nation and "women’s education." Other ideas are to look for recent articles about your nation and its treatment of women and its education system.