Interview with Amaury Pierret -  Deputy chair of HRC

Hello Amaury, could you please present yourself?

Hello I'm Amaury, and I'm deputy chair in HRC, Human Rights Committee. I am a student at the IFS (International French School of Singapore), in 11th grade.

How long have you been doing MUN?

This is technically only my 2nd year of MUN because I had to stop last year for various reasons. Therefore, this is only my 5th conference for now. 

Why do you enjoy MUN?

I really enjoy public speaking, as well as meeting and being able to interact with new people. I particularly like the concept of team work in MUN: having to negotiate with them, having to plan, and write resolutions with them. On top of this I find it really interesting and fun to improvise speeches and having to come up with POIs. So overall it’s rewarding. 

Would you care to precise what is a POI? 

Yes, of course. A POI is a point of information, and it’s essentially a question. It takes place after the speeches, delegates can ask a question to the person (delegate) who just gave a speech in order to get a clarification of their argument. It's one of the key interruptions in MUN because speeches represent a big part of MUN, so the POIs allows delegates who aren't making the speeches to challenge the speech makers and it also allows the speech makers to add on to what they said in their speech, information that they couldn't fit into their speech because of time constraints.

How do you determine which delegate has to give the speech? 

What you just saw was debate time. When it starts, the main submitter of the resolution comes up and makes a speech in favor of their resolution. Afterwards, anybody else can choose to either make a speech for or against the resolution. If multiple people want to give a POI at the same time, it's up to the chair to decide who goes first, generally it’s priority to those who haven't spoken as much yet. This eventually leads to debate, until one of the delegates proposes the better (winning) argument. The other delegates then vote whether they agree or don’t with this proposal. So during debate time, delegates can submit amendments that will modify the resolution: they can strike clauses, they can rephrase them, or even add new sections. This is when the resolution is fleshed out since it's written by just one lobby, it often lacks certain details and contains some issues. Most of the time, when countries disagree with some of the elements from the resolution it’s because it doesn't align with their ideology or other recent events. Therefore through the amendments and debates a new resolution can be created and passed by the whole committee.

Does each delegate propose a resolution?

A conference always starts with opening speeches, followed by lobbying–lobbying is when the delegates form lobbies, which are groups of delegates with similar views–and these lobbies then write resolutions with one of the delegates being a main submitter. In this case, our topic is surveillance, and there was a lobby over here, and the main submitter was the delegate of India. The other lobby was for topic two, whose main submitter was the United States. 

Would you mind describing your role as chair? What exactly does it entail?

There are three chairs, and we divide the work between each other in different ways. The head chair was a big help to the newer delegates; they explained to them how to do MUN and they explained the MUN procedures, how to write a resolution and so on. There's also different little tasks that are required by MUN procedure. For example, the tally sheet used to keep track of how many POIs, how many speeches, and how many amendments delegates have made. There is also roll call, which is something that you just have to do. Generally, to mediate the discussion, before doing anything, delegates have to ask permission, and it's a very structured process. The chairs will ask the delegate who just made the speech, if they're open to any POIs, and then if the delegate says yes, then the chairs will ask the rest of the committee who wants to make POIs. And then the delegates raise their placards and the chairs decide in what order the delegates pass.The delegates ask their POIs. It’s a very structured process, so the chairs have to really guide the whole thing as it progresses and as it moves forward.

So, Amaury, how has the conference been so far, and what would you expect for the next couple of days? 

The conference so far has been pretty good. The delegates in the committee are really nice. A lot of them are beginners, but they're not too shy. Some of them do need a bit of encouragement to speak as they're not used to public speaking and taking initiative. But that's fine, and that's something we can work with. I feel there's a pretty good vibe in the committee; everybody's nice to each other, and everybody's just trying to have a good time. Today we started debating and it was okay, and the whole thing is sort of gaining steam. Hopefully as the days go by, people get more confident and start making more speeches and also being more proactive with amendments to really achieve a bit more a bit faster. Though I think we're heading in a good direction right now.