In February 2010 a delegation from MUNUSAL, the University of Salamanca’s Model United Nations, and one of our EMUNNET partners, took part at the HNMUN (Harvard National Model UN). After this, the delegation spent a week in NY.

Sofía García (part of MUNUSAL’s delegation and GIMUN representative in NY) and Ine Declerck (New York Main Representative) took the time to welcome our partners and organise some meetings for them. The first of them with Mr. Peter Schweiger Head of the EU Commission's delegation to the UN and the second with Mr. Jose María Caballero from the Spanish Mission to the UN.

The students had the chance to hear a brief introduction about the functioning of both institutions and then a question & answer session was entertained. At EU Commission's mission,  the focus was how the delegation is getting adapted to the new Treaty of Lisbon, the Role of the EU on gender issues and the different groups and alliances the EU is part of. As some of the students were not Spanish, not even European, the questions were diverse and the debate very interesting. All students reported that after the meeting they had a better knowledge of the EU and that some helpful ideas were taken along the time we spent with Mr. Schweiger. At the meeting with the Spanish mission, the students were encouraged to apply for positions and internships at both at the UN and the mission itself and they were informed by Mr. Caballero about the hot topics the Spanish mission is currently working on. After that, the ambassador received the students and offered us a short tour through the different rooms and offices. Overall, the participants were very grateful for this chance to round up their trip to the US.

Javier Sierra, president of MUNUSAL expressed his wish to repeat the experience next year when a new delegation from the University of Salamanca comes to the US to take part at the HNMUN.