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Dear Delegates,
It is my pleasure to welcome you to the United Nations Human Rights Council at World Model United Nations 2012! My name is Sam Pokross, and I am excited to serve as your chair for the week that you will spend in Vancouver next March. This conference will be my first WorldMUN and my first trip to Vancouver, and I am looking forward to experiencing both with all of you on this committee.
I am a junior at Harvard, concentrating in Linguistics with a focus on the psychological aspects of language cognition. Originally from Newton, Massachusetts, I went to high school in Cambridge, right down the street from Harvard. I participated as a delegate at eight Model UN conferences in high school, but once I came to college, I quickly realized that I preferred serving on the staff of the conferences. By the time we all arrive in Vancouver in March, I will have staffed seven conferences both on the substantive and the executive side, including as the Under-Secretary-General for Administration for Harvard National Model United Nations 2012. Outside of Model UN, I conduct research on language development in a psychology laboratory and participate in the International Relations Council, the umbrella organization for IR-related groups on campus. When I am not doing work for my classes or for my extracurricular activities, I enjoy watching mind-numbing reality TV, eating delicious food, and going for long walks along the Charles River.
I chose to direct the UNHRC because, perhaps more than any other committee at WorldMUN 2012, you will have the opportunity to debate and attempt to solve two topics that truly affect regular individuals. The two topics that I have selected are both of crucial importance for the future of international debate on human rights. The problem of the protection of human rights defenders against hostile governments covers the rights of individuals who are working to fulfill the mission of the council and addresses the line between national sovereignty and the need to ensure the safety of individual lives. The topic of minority education rights touches on the distinction between individual and group rights and will force you to balance the interests of national governments and ethnic and linguistic minority groups. While both these topic areas are challenging and complex, I am sure that you will be able to develop innovate solutions to these crucial human rights issues.
Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions about these topics areas or Model UN in general. I hope you enjoy learning about these topics, and I look forward to seeing you in Vancouver!
Sincerely,
Sam Pokross
Chair, United Nations Human Rights Council
World Model United Nations 2012
unhrc@worldmun.org
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Topic A: Protection of Human Rights Defenders Against Hostile Governments
Article One of the Declaration on Human Rights Defenders, adopted by the General Assembly on 9 December 1998, states, “Everyone has the right, individually and in association with others, to promote and to strive for the protection and realization of human rights and fundamental freedoms at the national and international levels.” While this universally recognized document acknowledges the dangers faced by human rights workers and ensures their safety and protection, this issue becomes much more complicated in practice, especially when national governments themselves are involved in persecuting the human rights defenders. Two of the most prominent cases in recent years have been the imprisonments of the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi in Myanmar and of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo in China. Governments hostile to the work of certain human rights defenders have also used other methods to silence their critics, including shutting down their organizations, restricting their travel, and even orchestrating assassinations. This problem exists not only in nations with authoritarian governments but also in those with democratic systems.
The UNHRC must decide on the most effective mechanisms for protecting the rights of human rights defenders. Does the international community have the right or the duty to make an effort to ensure the safety of human rights defenders? How can they be protected without violating the sovereignty of the nation in question? How severely should the international community punish countries that endanger human rights defenders? The council must figure out how to protect the people whose work is so important to its mission while at the same time guaranteeing each nation’s sovereignty.
Topic B: Minority Education Rights
It is indisputable that access to education provides the opportunity for economic prosperity and political participation. Numerous international human rights documents have established and reasserted the right to education, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. While no one denies this universal right, its application to ethnic and linguistic minorities has long been a source of debate. Many of these documents assert a general right to education but do little to explain what a national education system should look like, and this ambiguity has led to major discrepancies in the treatment of minorities in terms of education. This problem consists of three main subtopics. Firstly, governments often offer primary and secondary education to all citizens in only the country’s national or majority language, which leaves linguistic minorities at a disadvantage when entering the school system. Secondly, some countries have instituted nationalistic education programs that teach a skewed version of history to children in order to increase support for the government, vilifying or ignoring the history of minority groups. Thirdly, many minority children encounter discrimination from their peers and teachers at school, which sometimes leads them to leave the education system entirely.
The UNHRC must touch on a number of questions relating to minority education rights. Given the increased costs and complication associated with it, do linguistic minorities have the right to receive education in their native language? If yes, how should nations go about creating these new education systems? Should curricula be tailored for minority groups or should national or international standards be introduced? How can the international community deal with the discrimination that minority children encounter from their peers and teachers and in their curricula? In answering these questions, the council must consider what rights minority groups have and how these rights should be balanced with national interests.