UNITED NATIONS SECURITY COUNCIL MUNUC XXIX Topic A: The Situation in Burundi Topic B: The Situation in Yemen LETTER FROM THE CO-EXECUTIVE Dear delegates, Welcome to the United Nations Security Council! My name is Helen, and I’m your Co-Executive. Over the course of this conference, you will be engaging with a complex current conflict with serious implications for the international community. To introduce myself, I’m a third-year undergraduate student at the University of Chicago. I’m majoring in in Public Policy with a specialization in Education Policy. Outside of class, I tutor students in local Chicago schools and work in the UChicago Admissions Office as a tour guide. I first became involved in Model UN in my Seattle-area high school, when my first conferences as a delegate gave me incredibly eye-opening experiences that have continued to influence me in my time here at UChicago. Outside of classes and MUNUC, I am also involved with our collegiate competitive Model UN team as well as ChoMUN (our collegiate MUN conference). This will be my third year in MUNUC and second year as an executive, as I chaired our Interpol committee last year. I’m very excited to be Co-Executive of the Security Council this year, and look forward to meeting you all. The Security Council is charged with maintaining international peace and security. To carry out this responsibility, it is the only UN body authorized to impose sanctions or deploy peacekeeping forces. Of its 15 delegates, 5 will have veto power, making the diplomatic process in this committee particularly complex. The topics that the UNSC addresses are similarly complex, often requiring highly difficult conflict resolution processes, extreme differences in opinion and interests, and catastrophic humanitarian consequences when solutions are not found. In short, the Security Council plays high-stakes games – something that I believe makes it one of the most fascinating and exciting committees to simulate. For your committee this year, we have selected the situations in Burundi (Topic A) and Yemen (Topic B). The post-election violence and human rights violations in Burundi have waxed and waned in their intensity over the past few years, but have problematically remained largely out of the international spotlight. On the other hand, the Yemeni Civil War has attracted very much international attention, leading to highly complex layers of domestic and international tension, along with the rise of extreme terrorist groups, complete lack of central power, and severe need for international aid. Whichever topic you pick, I hope it will bring out the most of your diplomatic, analytic, and creative abilities over our upcoming conference. If you have any questions at all, please feel free to email me at [email protected]. The entire Security Council staff has been working hard to make your MUNUC XXIX one full of engagement with fascinating world issues, exciting debate, and the best experiences possible. We look forward to meeting you in February! Best, Helen Zhang 2 UNITED NATIONS SECURITY COUNCIL MUNUC XXIX LETTER FROM THE CO-EXECUTIVE Welcome to the United Nations Security Council! We are Aiden and Helen, Co-Executives, and we are so excited to have you all here to participate in what will surely be an awesome and eventful weekend! We are both third year students at the University of Chicago who spend a ridiculous amount of time doing Model UN on campus. Helen is involved in our competitive traveling team as well as our college conference Chomun as an executive, whereas Aiden serves on ChoMUN’s Secretariat as an Under-Secretary General. We are also both tour guides who work for the UChicago Admissions Office as well as being roommates, so we tend to spend a lot of time together even outside of MUN. As far as what we study on campus, Helen is a Public Policy major while Aiden is a History and Political Science double major. Between the two of us we spend a lot of time reading and writing about the different social/political/economic issues that people face around the world and what we’re hoping for you all is to explore these issues in two particular countries. For Topic A, we picked the situation in Burundi because we feel as though oftentimes African countries are only discussed in cases of war and famine. Aiden, whose family is from Ethiopia, has especially noticed this over the course of her political studies, because in many discussions of African politics the citizens of these countries are not really discussed in such a way that gives them political agency. So, what we’re hoping to for you all to get out of our discussions is mostly an opportunity to explore the political landscape of an African country that has a very interesting historical background. It isn’t about knowing everything there is to know about the conflict but rather to understand the ways in which history has shaped this country into what it is today so that we can figure out what we should do to fix its political problems going forward. We know this topic is going to be unfamiliar to many people, but we hope you all have as much debating it as we did researching it! Topic B is the crisis in Yemen. Although, occasionally mentioned in discussions about terrorism, this politics of this particular country have often been relegated to the sidelines of our history books. Another former colonial state, Yemen as we know it is a relatively new state with very old political problems. Due to its strategic location, various groups within the country are always being supported by various international actors, meaning that its domestic politics have always been inextricably linked to the geopolitical situation which surrounds it. This is especially important when considering the fact that most of the world’s oil passes through the narrow strait between the Arabian peninsula and the African coast and thus just a few kilometers off the coast of Yemen. When considering how to solve its internal political crises it will be crucial to consider the international interests at play in the region and how this will influence their decision to either support or reject whatever coalition is created. We look forward to seeing you all at MUNUC this year, and please do not hesitate to reach out to us with any questions at [email protected]. Best, Aiden Million 3 UNITED NATIONS SECURITY COUNCIL MUNUC XXIX COMMITTEE HISTORY The Security Council has a long and storied history as the most powerful and influential organ within the United Nations (UN). Active since the UN was chartered in 1945, the Security Council has most visibly coordinated the actions of the military and peacekeeping forces in missions across the globe, but its role in the world extends far beyond overseeing field operations. The main goals of the Security Council are simple and explicitly defined: investigate and report on threats to international peace across the globe; resolve these disputes, using diplomatic means whenever possible and escalating to coercive measures, such as economic sanctions, as necessary; and facilitate disarmament and demobilization of belligerents in conflicts through the deployment of peacekeeping troops.1 It is fitting that, with such large responsibilities, the Security Council has the widest range of action across the UN: it is the only body capable of applying sanctions, deploying troops, and generally, writing binding resolutions that member states are obligated follow. Reflective of its importance and influence, membership criteria for the Security Council was initially designed around the key players in the international order following the victory of the Allied nations in World War II, namely the “P5” nations of France, the United States, the United Kingdom, the Republic of China (today commonly known as Taiwan), and the Soviet Union; in the decades since its founding, the lattermost two countries have been replaced by the People’s Republic of China (1971) and the Russian Federation (1991) respectively. These five nations hold permanent seats on the Council and hold a veto power over any resolution. That is, in order for a resolution to pass, each of these five nations must either approve or abstain from voting on it; put another way, if any of these countries object, the resolution automatically fails to pass. The remainder of the fifteen-country roster of the Security Council is comprised of ten rotating spots, to which member nations of the UN are elected for two-year terms by the General Assembly.2 This basic structure has remained mostly intact since the UNSC’s founding, and was intended as a compromise of sorts between the practical balance of power in the world (hence, the P5) and the need for all members of the UN to be represented (the elected positions). However, while the original Council had only eleven members—its small size was supposed to enable it to make decisions more quickly—the number of elected seats was increased from six to ten in 1965.3 The Security Council was born at the end of the Second World War, at a time when many diplomats felt that some kind of collective security mechanism was necessary to prevent the world from descending into a third major conflagration. It was the spiritual successor to the League of Nations, whose inability to compel nations to adhere to internationally agreed-upon standards led to the outbreak of WWII in the first place. Evaluating the record of the UNSC is less clear-cut. During the Cold War, the Council was rendered largely ineffective by the conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States, both of whom possessed veto power as 1 “What We Do,” United Nations Foundation.