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Security Council Forewords STUDY GUIDE SECURITY COUNCIL FOREWORDS Distinguished delegates, On the behalf of the 2019 organising team, it is a pleasure to welcome you in Rennes for SPRIMUN. Along with the two chairs of this committee, Jean-Baptiste d’Isidoro and Zacharie Le Vigoureux, we hope that those three days of diplomacy will be full of success for you. But most importantly, welcome to the UN Security Council dear delegates, place of the harshest and strongest negotiations. You are reunited here to take decisions that could change the world’s stability for ever. The two topics you’ll have to address require a high level of diplomacy, they are both extremely challenging. A very careful preparation is needed not to bump into one of the many obstacles they present. Only keep one thing in mind: a resolution must be found! Jean-Baptiste and Zacharie have done an important work on this study guide, which gives you the opportunity to be perfectly ready for the conference. This guide is here to help you in your preparation for the conference. It gives you an overview of the main issues concerning the two topics and orients your researches in order to settle your country’s position. Your position paper, and later, your speeches will have to reflect the information that you have been provided here. To be successful in the committee and maybe even win awards, a careful preparation is needed, and includes a specific attention to this study guide. Two points are important in a MUN: your ability to represent the position of your designed country and, at the same time, your ability to work around this position in order to reach a fruitful compromise in the adopted resolution. Please keep in mind that it is strictly forbidden to bring already written draft resolutions to the conference, as all the working papers and draft resolutions should be only developed during SPRIMUN, not before. Should you have any inquiry regarding the preparation of the conference, do not hesitate to contact us. We will do our best to make sure you live a great experience! I wish you good luck in your preparation. Best regards, Gaïd Carval SPRIMUN 2019 Delegate Manager 2 Distinguished Delegates, It is our honour and our privilege to welcome you to SPRIMUN 2019’s United Nations Security Council. We are both eager to meet you in person and we are both committed to making our time together as exciting, fun, and informative as possible. Both of us have quite a few MUN experiences between us as delegates or chairs. We hope that you shall help us make this new chapter in our MUN journey a memorable one, be it by the quality of your debates on the floor or by your hangover management skills. The two topics on the agenda will put you and your diplomacy skills to the test. We have written this study guide so as to highlight the many issues at stake and we hope that it will help you in your preparations for the conference. Although both topics bring their own technical and political difficulties, we have no doubt that you will succeed in agreeing upon feasible and comprehensive resolutions. Should you have any questions, do not hesitate to get in touch. See you in Rennes! Zacharie Le Vigoureux & Jean-Baptiste d’Isodoro Your chairs How to use this study guide: This document is not an exhaustive guide on the South Sudanese conflict and the Palestinian issue. The study guide provides guidelines and references to help the delegates in doing their own research on the issues. 3 UN SECURITY COUNCIL OVERVIEW The United Nations Organisation is widely considered to be one of the greatest successes in international relations. Founded in the aftermath of one of the most destructive international conflicts in human history – the Second World War – the hope was that it would improve international cooperation and promote international peace and security. The United Nations Security Council is one of the principle bodies of the United Nations Organization. It consists of fifteen state members, including five permanent members (also known as the P5 group: China, France, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the United States of America). In 2019, the ten non-permanent members (which are elected by the United Nations General Assembly for two-year terms) shall consist of Belgium, Côte d’Ivoire, Dominican Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Germany, Indonesia, Kuwait, Peru, Poland, South Africa. By the mandate of the United Nations Charter, the Security Council is primarily responsible for the maintenance of international peace and security. Article 24 of the Charter particularly stresses the need for “prompt and effective action” by the United Nations, which is why in Article 25 of the Charter all United Nations member states commit to “accept and carry out the decisions of the Security Council,” regardless of their membership or non-membership therein. One of the unique features of the workings of the Security Council is the requirement of zero opposing votes from permanent member states in order for any substantive decision to be taken, which is often the source of a perceived impasse in its work. The mandate of the Security Council is derived from its above-mentioned primary responsibility, but is otherwise virtually limitless. Chapters VI and VII of the United Nations Charter outline some of the possible courses of action that the Security Council might take in pursuit of the peaceful settlement of disputes or in order to respond to threats to international peace and security. It is important to note that, when acting under Chapter VII of the Charter, decisions taken by the United Nations Security Council members are legally binding, be it towards every member of the international community or towards only a select few (as per the Security Council’s decision). 4 TOPIC A: THE RECOGNITION OF PALESTINE AS A UN MEMBER STATE INTRODUCTION BACKGROUND INFORMATION ON THE RECOGNITION OF PALESTINE AS A STATE IN LIGHT OF THE HISTORY OF THE NEAR EAST CONTEXT THE RECOGNITION OF PALESTINE AS A STATE To fully understand the question of the membership of Palestine at the United Nations, it is necessary to look back at the history of the recognition of Palestine as a sovereign State, in connection with the history of the region and of Israel. This question has had a large impact on the Middle East for more than 60 years, while entertaining ramifications that went beyond the region. International powers, first being France, the UK, and later on the United States or the USSR, have indeed been fully involved in the issue, largely influencing the question whether Palestine should be recognized as a State or not. The first issue to look at when it comes to envisaging the sovereignty of Palestine is the Israeli- Palestinian conflict. Indeed, the question of the statehood of Palestine has emerged while Israel was being progressively recognized as a State itself by the international community. For some countries, the recognition of both Palestine and Israel is still incompatible : acknowledging the existence of one means refusing the legitimacy of the other ; while for many others, including most of Members of the European union, the only way out is a « two States » solution, implying a mutual recognition of both parties. A. The recognition of Israel as State The tension surrounding the recognition of both Israel and Palestine partly relies on the fact that for some countries of the region, Israel « conquered » a land that was already occupied. It was however in contradiction with the progressive establishment of the jewish people in the region, which was following a simple yet decisive moto : Palestine was a « land without a people » and the jewish were « a people without a land ». It was the main idea behind the zionist project, which goal was the organisation of the jewish migration and the settlement in 5 the promised land, i.e. Palestine. The frustration started to raise in the region in the late 1910s, as the jewish population in the region was growing, and as tensions with the arabs on the use of economic and natural resources were increasing. One of the first decision that had a large influence on the progressive recognition of Israel as State was the Balfour Declaration of 1917. Lord Balfour was the British Secretary of Foreign Affairs. In one of its letters, later published in the press, with Lord Rothschild, who was one of the biggest financial funder of the zionist project, Balfour announced its support for the establishment of a « national home for the Jewish people ». Later on, the decision was enshrined in the Paris treaty of 1920, signed by the European powers following world War I and the dislocation of the Ottoman empire. As off that decision, the State of Israel’s legitimacy grew, even though still strongly disputed by the Arab people during the revolts in the years 1930s. After World War II, and as the world witnessed the genocide committed by the Nazis against the Jewish, the need for a « home » that would protect the people of the Torah became more and more clear for the international powers. If efforts were made to settle a « sharing plan » (notably the 1947 one) between the two people, mainly by the initiative of Western powers, it never allowed a mutual recognition between the Arabs and the Jewish people, nor envisaging the possibility to share the land equally. Facing the failure of the negotiations, Israel, by then led by prime Minister Ben Ghourion, declared its independence in 1948. The declaration of independence was quickly followed by a military reaction of the neighbouring Arab States.
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