Mitrovica high school students became the United Nations for a day, during the first ever Mitrovica Model United Nations.

The event, held on May 12, brought together 22 Kosovo-Albanian and Kosovo-Serb students from the four Northern Kosovo municipalities, including students from South Mitrovica.

The educational and experiential simulation of UN work sessions provided the opportunity for a consolidated understanding of multilateral diplomacy and development of leadership skills in a multi-ethnic setting.

Taking on the role of 7 delegations within the UN organ of an Economic and Social Council, and representing countries from around the world such as Brazil, the students requested agenda items, crafted their position papers and employed capacities of negotiation, compromise, critical thinking, public speaking, and research, including the ability to anticipate evolving nature of complex issues, towards the resolution of global environmental issues such as deforestation and rising sea levels.

During resolution drafting, the delegation of Brazil represented by K-Serb students and the Uruguay delegation of predominately K-Albanian students who had never previously met, found alignment on solutions to issues of rising sea levels which are impacting coastal countries.

All those who attended appreciated the opportunity to turn their minds to issues that represent real global threats.

MMUN was a pilot project but the recent success means it could become a Kosovo-wide, full-scale initiative with the addition of mixed-nationality facilitator team, English as adopted operational language and expanded range of global issues in its potential future cycle.

MMUN facilitating team observed that university students, as well as students of linguistics or strong academic background generally present at grammar schools would make most out of these workshops in the future.

The project was implemented by NGO New Social Initiative (NSI) at the IBCM premises in North Mitrovica and was supported by UNMIK through their Confidence Building Measure Projects.