Exhausting!

I didn't blog yesterday but for good reason. We were in committee from 830AM to 10PM with only two breaks for lunch and dinner. Debate is thorough and complicated and can also be extremely frustrating. It is clear that there are many ways of stalling and complicating the UN process and I think we've all come into contact with that. Today, even though we were given a break was probably the most exhausting and frustrating day of committee for me. We were finally able to pass our first resolutions and move to our second topic, which is when the problems began. Within minutes of our evening session it was clear that the topic of unilateral sanctions was delicate and potentially explosive. Delegates were clearly upset with each other and the AMUN rule 2.2 referring to diplomatic courtesy was brought up by the Chair at least 10 times. Amazingly, we passed another amendment that night and were in the process of another before a call was made to suspend session for the night in the interest of delegates' sanity. Somalia though perhaps a strong player in other committees was reminded of its economic dependence on the US often and was subsequently 'advised' on many courses of action and voting throughout the session and this was in fact true for a couple of other small countries I spoke with. Somalia certainly did not want any sort of veiled threat of economic sanction. Anyway, enough politics. All in all it has been one of the most eventful and one of the most tedious days. I learned thoroughly the reasoning behind the beliefs that UN suffers because it is unable to actually agree or put into place certain courses of action. Though this can be the case, I still fully believe that UN in many cases, facilitates programs and actions that greatly help the international community.