R E V I V A L please ^

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!

posted by itan88 @ 10:59 PM