Visualizing HNMUN 2015: ASEAN, WHO, SPECPOL, and HGA

By JOHN SUNUNU, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

The General Assembly committees at Harvard National Model United Nations 2015 are among the most competitive — but most rewarding — bodies of discussion at the collegiate speech and debate level. Our reporters at Agence France-Presse have been following many of these bodies over the last three days and were interested in taking a closer look into the solutions that each of these committees reached. In the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Committee, or ASEAN (admittedly more of a Regional Body albeit with the structure of a General Assembly), delegates discussed the growing importance of devising and implementing effective response plans to natural disasters before turning to the issue of human rights and political stability on the Asian continent. The World Health Organization, or WHO, argued over biofortification, the global pharmaceutical industry, and the role each of these concepts should play on a regional and international level. Members of the Special Political and Decolonization Committee spent the weekend dissecting the small arms trade into a series of comprehensive definitions before using this foundation to enact a framework to stem the flow of illegal weapons worldwide. Finally, the dedicated delegates in the Historical General Assembly, 2000 Committee tackled problems relevant to every United Nations member state: the Millennium Development Goals, decolonization, and democracy in a globalized society.

Keeping these overarching themes in mind, Agence France-Presse conducted a detailed analysis of the final draft resolutions proposed and passed in each committee. In conjunction with the leadership of these bodies, we collected as many resolutions as possible introduced across each body and parsed through them carefully. With the assistance of a piece of online software called TagCrowd, our reporters extracted the most relevant and most repeated words and phrases from their collective pages. They are displayed below in a series of beautiful infographics for your perusal.