Opening of SiONU 2014 - Foundation Office Brazil
Event Reports
As in past years, Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung Brazil supports the country's largest simulation of the United Nations Conference, SiONU. The simulations called Model United Nations (MUN) are simulation games in which various committees of the World Organization are simulated, especially the Security Council and the General Assembly. The participants, who are grouped into delegations, each represent a state and act as diplomats. The task is to train diplomatic skills, rhetoric and eloquence. The aim is to represent the position of the country in the committee as truthfully as possible. The best delegates receive certificates as outstanding or even best participants during the closing ceremony.
The opening ceremony in 2014 was held at the historic setting of the former seat of the Foreign Ministry, the Itamaraty Palace in Rio de Janeiro. Ronald Paschoal, Coordinator for International Relations at the University Estácio de Sá (UNESA) opened the conference together with Pedro Spadale, Deputy Minister for International Relations of the State of Rio de Janeiro and Laudemar Aguiar, head of the department of International Relations of the city of Rio de Janeiro and welcomed the over 500 students who were eager to face the four-day marathon of negotiations in the different committees as diplomats. Particular attention would be paid to the Olympic Committee, so the speaker, as Rio de Janeiro will host the Summer Olympics in 2016.
Christian Matthäus held a speech on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall. He elucidated the numerous data and milestones during the years directly preceding the fall, 1989 and 1990, and discussed the role of the old Western powers, the USA, France, and Great Britain, as well as the role of glasnost and perestroika in the late 1980s under Gorbachev in the Soviet Union. Neither in the West nor in the East had anybody actually believed that the reunification could succeed in a peaceful manner, which is why the German Unity at the beginning of 1989 was a historic milestone. Matthäus reminded the participants that at that time the power of words instead of wars was instrumental to the reunification of Germany on 03 October 1990. This was the only solution to solve disagreements and conflicts that was acceptable to all parties involved and it also applied to today's conflicts, which needed to be discussed in the various committees of the SiONU 2014. The overcoming of the bipolar world order, triggered by the fall of the Berlin Wall, had not necessarily led to a simplification of the global political conflicts, but let a multipolar world order emerge that exposed ethnic, socio-cultural and religious conflicts with greater clarity. Matthäus concluded that the international expectations with regards to Brazil being a regional power had risen, thus putting the country in a position quite similar to the reunited Germany as Europe's most populous and economically largest country. Both countries pursued a diplomacy-based approach to global problem solving and shared a common value base.
Giancarlo Summa, director of the Information Center of the United Nations in Brazil discussed the history of the organisation from its foundation in 1945, and described the today's world as a "more complex, but better world than that of 1945". Especially Brazil had developed quite astonishingly during the last 20 years, reached many of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, and successfully participated in numerous programmes of UN-affiliated organizations. This way it applies more to tread. It was important now to continue in the same direction.
The university simulation of SiONU will take place from 19 – 23 November on a university campus Estácio de Sá in Rio de Janeiro. In addition to the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, the British School of Rio de Janeiro, and UNIC RIO support the event both financially and in non-material ways.
