By Eef Gerard Van Emmerik

I WRITE this letter on the bus from Philadelphia to New York after having attended the University of Pennsylvania Model United Nations (MUN) from Nov 12 to 15 in the beautiful city of Philadelphia, home of the Liberty Bell.

In case you don't know what MUN is, it is an academic simulation of the United Nations. Students participate as diplomats from various UN member states.

This particular MUN hosted more than 1,000 students from 83 universities all over the world. My school - the Singapore Management University - and the National University of Singapore sent a delegation of almost 20.

Through this exercise, participants work on solutions to global problems such as ageing populations, nuclear disarmament and the Middle East crisis.

There is a perception that students come up with airy-fairy solutions that have no place in the real world because students are not constrained by reality. It is just role-play after all, right?

But the truth is, participants are constrained by their country's real-life policies. They cannot deviate from these given positions and have to work within them, or they will be called out by moderators.

The end result? We were able to cooperate on issues fairly well.

What we do not lack is ingenuity and idealism, allowing us to come up with creative and meaningful solutions. Unfettered by the cynicism and hypocrisy so often harboured by real-world diplomats, we shared a desire to work on common goals.

We may argue, yes, but I feel youth are not as jaded or as constrained by 'how things are supposed to work' as older individuals.

For example, my committee of 80 delegates, the Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Committee (Sochum) of the General Assembly, managed to pass three out of four draft resolutions, paving the way to eliminating female genital mutilation.

Sochum first convened in 1948, and generally deals with controversial human rights issues, and female genital mutilation still affects a staggering 140 million women today.

We disagreed as to whether education or law enforcement was a better solution, but we kept our focus on the eventual goal - to wipe out this brutality once and for all.

My four days with my fellow 'UN delegates' filled me with hope that my generation can be united by a common humanity, a value usually laughed off as unachievable.

We know that there are certain inalienable human rights every UN member - be it the United States or Uganda, the Netherlands or North Korea - must aspire to, and banish exceptionalism from the corridors of power.

With all due respect to the real UN, this model UN may just be its ideal model.

The writer, 20, is a first-year law student at the Singapore Management University.

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