praise Him for his provisions!..
so yeah, just got back from Boston last night, 1140 pm.
I'm still suffering from post-harvardmun trauma(excitment)
I have to say, other than the intense debates, there were a number of pretty fun and silly experiences too! :)
So anyways, in the International Court of Justices, the judges have to wear robes for every session. And in as professional a conference as harvard mun, each of us in the ICJ were made to where the robes for our session, and were allowed to where them out as well.
Every mun has its own traditions in terms of the last 2 hrs of committee session, where the delegates get to do silly things. And in Harvard, and by right every other mun, Justices from the ICJ are to receive standing ovasions and a short time to speak when they enter any committee at anytime. This is done in the real UN as well. So all the justices in this committee have been planning to do prance into as many committees as we could the last 10 min of the court sessions. And at the last day, we executed our plan.
Little did we know how bad that would back-fire.
So the 9 of us, (the rest of the 13 were not present, some of them were disqualified),eagerly walked down the hallways to decide on which committees to walk into. And because this was the last committe sessions, many of them were in voting procedure, and we were not allowed to enter. But after a while, we decided to enter one of the largest committes, Disarmements and Security, in order to receive the most amount of applause. But when we walked in, the delegates were so clueless as to why these guys in robes were prancing through the committee session and standing in front of everyone. But as a procedure, the dais asked everyone to stand and applaud. But what we got was jeering and puzzled coutanances. haha, and when we were asked to speak , we had nothing to say. then the dais simply went, "thank you judges for the visit, now LEAVE MY CHAMBERS!" haha, we were so ambarrased that we were chased out like that.
So the next stop was the the UNICEF. We decided that that was a smaller committee and that they would be more respectful to us. But this was even worse. This time, NO ONE stood, and instead, some one shouted, "look! the justices are standing for us!" how ambarrasing. But the worst part was, the dais was especially cruel to us. He made sure that no one stood or applauded for us. And when we shamefully left the roome we were literally ATTACKED by the Chinese Circus! That was really funny. The chinese circus is formed by the delegates of the Chinese Politburo as tradition after they finish the topics at hand. What happened was, they held up the china flag and used it as a blockade to prevent us from entering our court and threw paper and cups while firing their toy guns at us!
which i have to say was an accurate rendition of the scene, because the toy guns were probably made in china and so were the cups.
Haha yeah, well, i think i'm probably gonna post once more about HMUN and that would probably be it. so yeah! praise God :)
Harvard MUN update!
well, its 2:36 am now in boston and the conference officially ended yesterday at 2:00pm. Man! i have sooo much to say about the committee this year, but i'm soo lazy to type. ok, i'll try to do so anyways.
So anyways, i left for Harvard last wednesday morning. It was really crazy, really, because less then a month ago i was in Stanford MUN. And when i returned, i had less then a week to prepare for the exams. Then after the week of exams, there was another week of exams revision and stuff and then i had to leave for Harvard. I have to say that this past month or so has been the most STRESSFUL month yet at Saints.
I was supposed to have my position paper for France done a month before the conference, but because of Stanford and exams i couldnt do it! Man, little did i know of how freakin essential it was to have had more than enough research done for the conference! I basically only had like 3 days before the conference to actually research my topics before i left for boston. PLUS, the week before the exams, i was busy preparing for art university interviews, other university applications and the art sale. Thats was so crazy. while the other guys in the boarding house were like slacking and waiting for the holidays to approach, i left for UBC as soon as i returned from school and went to the law library to research my documents till late. AHHH!! haha, anyways, i really enjoy doing these kinds of things. dont ask me why.
so anyhow, my topics for the Internatinal Court of Justice were:
a) France V Congo
Certain criminal proceedings in France against certain Government officials of congo for the human rights violation. This was a really interesting topic. i have to say, that of the 5 MUN conferences that i have ever been to, this topic was by far the most complicated and difficult topic to discuss. The basic background is as such: President Nguesso of congo has been arrested on France territory when he travelled there for a diplomatic trip. And France issued an arrest warrant to arrest him and his other ministers for charges on crimes against humanity. Simply put, the genocide in Congo has been the worst genocide the world has ever seen, numbering to more than the deaths caused by WW2. Well, most of the deaths were caused by the belgian colonial rulers, but when they passed the autonomy of the country to France, and then to the locals, huge civil war broke out. Nguesso was on the the leaders of the three militias that killed so many.Anyways, to cut the story short, the whole debate now was between congo's claim for diplomatic immunity while france asserts universal jurisdiction on this case. and how convinient! i was france on this court! haha. anyways, the thing with the ICJ is that everything that we do and every "desicion" that we pass can only revolve around already existing treaties and conventions regarding this issue. this was such a big change to the skills that i have already aquired in other committees before when i used the arguements of morals and logic to make desicions with little consideration to existing documents. I was sooo unprepared! when i entered the court session, every other judge had an avergae of 17 cm thick of pure documents, while i only had about 4. it was so intimidating.
So anyhow, the complication arose when France used the UN convention on torture and genocide to justify its use of universal jurisdiction. The conventions does state that every country has the obligation to assert its jurisdiction onto violators of crimes against humanity, be it in or out of their domestic jurisdiction. The Geneva convention also states the same. However, Congo never signed and ratified any of these treaties. Plus, under the Vienna convention which congo DID ratify and predates these conventions, all head-of-states do enjoy diplomatic immunity. So it was really complicated.
So the fical verdict is as such: Ever justice(accept for one) voted on favour of the Congo, only bacause of the unfortunate circumstance of the legal documents at hand. however, the court was splt into 3 large split opinions. The first being that universal jurisdiction is only a matter of concept and absolutely cannot be applied in this case. However, the court urges the congolese legislature to waive the immunity or the ICC to waive the immunity. My camp also voted in favour of the congo. HOWEVER, we do still support universal jurisdiction as a binding international customery law as stated in the treaties and conventions. We stated that it was essntially LEGAL for france to issue the arrest warrent as it was merely fulfilling its domestic and international obligation. However, it would NOT be legal for France to carry out or convict the incumbent in its domestic court, because that would be in violation of the customary law of diplomatic immuinity.
b)Nicaragua V Colombia
Territorial disputes over the islands of Providencia, St Andres and Santa Catalina in the pacific. I specialized in the previous topic because that affected me more than this topic. But anyhow, the background is as such: Columbia and Nicaragua signed a treaty more than 60 yrs ago, giving Columbia jurisdiction over the islands. However, 50 yrs later, Nicaragua now claims the island to be rightfully theirs and claims the treaty of Barceness Esguerra treaty to be void. Their arguement is that they were forced to sign the treaty under the pressure of the US presence in the region. And is you look at the whole maritime boundries of the region, colimbia actually has a ridiculously large portion of the ocean which stretches so unfairly close to nicaragua. Plus, the locals of the island voted in favour of being under nicaraguen jurisdiction than columbian. Plus, columbia militarized the islands to the extent that it intruded into the livelyhood of the locals. The complication is that under the Vienna Convention of the Law of the Treaties, nicaragua is legally allowed to prove the treaty void if and only if they can prove coercion at the time the treaty was signed. Unfortunately, there has been no significant evidence to prove this and the US military forces withdrew from the region in 1928 and the treaty was signed in 1930. unfortunately, they cannot utilized this convention to prove their case. Other justices in the court wanted to use other documents like the UN convention on the law of the sea, which is actually predated by the esguerra treaty, and the convention on the continental shelf, which weas not ratified by nicaragua. So there is this huge complication of the issue, on whether or not we could use the mordern documents, which the vienna convention says might takes precendent over this bilateral treaty.
The final verdict is as such: The court was split into essential 2 majority desicions and one decenting opinion. Most were in the camp that voted in favour of columbia, but still used other modern documents to make another maritime boundry between the 2 countries. As for my camp, we also voted in favour of columbia, but left the maritime boundry at the 82nd maridian bacause we felt that it is not under the jurisdiction of the court to draw another maritime boundry as this violates the treaties and conventions at hand. the other decenting opinion was only endorsed by this one very very weird justice who basically only used the UN charter as grounds for claiming the treay void and giving self-determination to the islands, which till this day i find very very stupid and impractical.
Harvard MUN is THE craziest and most complex mun in the world. The students who go to this mun go there to try to impress the university and give them a little advantage in getting into this university. I dont however. The top schools in the world goes to this conference. Needless to say, I saw RJC and Hwa Chong in the conference. But unfortunately, not to sound arogant, neither of their delegates were good enough to be in the my committe, the ICJ. ahah! so yeah
But you know, it was really tough. This is my first real conference that i did not actually receive an award. It was really difficult. The justices in my committe were such excellent and outstanding legal thinkers, i was in awe of them. Because of my lack of research, many of my points were rebutted by the other justices. But i praise God that at least i'm not the worst ones on the committee. If anything, this conference has renewed and increase my love for studying law and maybe one day becoming a diplomate. I would really love that. Haha...
ok well, my roomates are about to sleep soon. "troy" is almost over. So good night and i'll update soon!
absolutely and IRREVOCABLY
This weekend has been the most powerful weekend for me thus far. It started off as a crazy and very stressful weekend. Simply put, i broke the law. And was caught doing so and involved others too. But it ended off great.
I have been driving myself back and forth school and around vancouver since 2 years ago.Something in me has been saying that this isnt the right thing to do, that i'm breaking the law. But i just brushed it aside thinking that my brother has been doing the same and that i wanted to spare my aunty the trouble of chaufering me around all the time. Anyways, i would be getting my N once i return from the holidays, and since i leave vancouver in a week.
Anyways, saturday morning, i was finally on my way to row with a crew, i was sooo excited to finally be able to do so. So i got up early and as usual, i drove myself to stanly park. But this morning went wrong. Lets just say i rear-ended a car in front of me which caused a chain reaction to the next car and basially rendered my aunt's car illegal to drive with. I know that this has nothing to do with my skill because i have been driving for ages now. It had to do with the situation i was in. Dont want to elaborate now.
Anyways, it was crazy, the guy i rear-ended was pretty pissed at it. He got out and was screaming his head off and the other car too. When it was time to exchange contacts, i realized i was driving without a lisence!oh man! anyways i had an Learners liscense and was restricting from driving alone. So it may have been a good thing that i didnt carry my lisence. However, they could have called the police.Man!
to cut the story short, i was in a HUGE load of s#$t. It was terrible. The car was really wrecked. like REALLY. Fortunately the other cars werent. For the rest of the weekend, i was just continually praying to God for forgiveness and a miracle for this situation. I knew that if the other 2 drivers were going to report for insurance, i would have a criminal record. I just kept praying and asking for forgiveness.It was tough. really bad.
But then i realized, that was exactly wat God wanted! This is exactly the type situation that i needed, spritually! I mean,i have been back sliding since who-knows-when. I havent been regularly praying to God. Only when i felt like it. QT seemed to distant to my vocabulary. I was really going down hill with my prayers to God. Because of this situation, I was MADE to pray with an earnest and truthful heart like i havent done in a loooong time. I feel as if this is a
Wake up call for me. As if i've been tooo engrossed in my own life that i havent had time for God. Now this will change things!
Just an hour ago i was in the shower, prostrating myself to Him and crying out to Him to change this situation. And i've decided that i have moved so far away from Him that i am going to approach Him now as if i were a new believer. Someone sinful who has just discovered God. So I decided that i was going to start my QT material from Day 1.
Then, just before i began tagging, i read "my utmost for His highest", January 1st. Day one. I wanted to begin anew.
And u know what!God is amazing! As i was reading, practically everything was speaking to me! the last paragraph says this:
But before we chose to follow God's will, a crisis must develope out lives. This happens because we tend to be unresponsive to God's gentle nudges.... He then providentially produces a crisis where we have to decide, for or against. that moment becomes a great crossroad in our lives. If a crisis has come to you on any front, SURRENDER YOUR WILL TO JESUS ABOSOUTELY AND IRREVOCABLY. God is simply amazing. He got me while i am my BUSIEST. Its like a powerful alarm ringing me up from my slumber. Praise Him in the highest!
... my earnest expectation and hope that in nothing, i shall be ashamed, but with all boldness, as always, so now also Christ will be magnified in my body whether by life or by death."
Philipians1:20
take my worlds apart
More and more i need you now
i owe u more each passing hour
the battle between grace and pride
i gave up not so long ago
so steal my heart and take the pain
and wash the feet and cleanse my pride
take the selfish, take the weak
and all the things i cannot hide
take the beauty take my fears,
my sinful soiled heart,make it pure
take my world, its Urs,
take it now, take it now!
to serve the ones that i dispise
speak the words i cant deny
watch the world i used to know,
fall to dust and blow away
i look beyond the empty Cross
forgetting what my life has cost
and wipe away the crimson stains
and all the tears that stil remaintake my world apart...
i pray...
oh, i pray..
