In regards to the simulation, I would like to echo Rebecca's point and say that I was extremely dissapointed with the outcome. As a representative from Doctors Without Borders, I was left in awe by the unwavering reluctance for states to recognize internal corruption as a barrier to their development. How are NGOs like us supposed to help countries like uganda when government officials are selling the resources they get in order to boost their wallets? It is just not feasible. And to peg anti-corruption as a "domestic" issue is utterly ridiculous. I would be curious to know how a corrupt state plans to go about fixing said problem without the aid of international and third party help.
While Doctors without Borders would never refuse a call to aid, it is nearly impossible to help in these situations. This leads me to my next point, privitization. Certain delegations (most notably McDonald), noted that our efforts to privitize in states actually made things worse. The truth is, these so-called "failures" are happening in countries where the governments are so screwed up internally that we can not begin to make a dent (which brings us back to internal state corruption). I realize that there were other important issues that did not get brought up, but from the standpoint of DWB, the two aforementioned issues really are our primary concerns and it is no suprise we got as worked up as we did when they were taken off the list.
Despite endless frustration over the selfishness and apathy displayed at the conference, I did find it enjoyable to have some healthy debate. I just wish that it could have been taken more seriously and been more productive. It would have been nice to get to some other issues, but the amount of time really wasn't enough for the task at hand. Some groups seemed to play into their roles better than others. I felt to me like some people just didn't care and would do anything to call an issue to order. After a point people seemed to "give up", which was dissapointing to say the least. Well, I suppose debating isn't everyones favorite thing, and I think it still worked well. I just wish we had triple the time.
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Yeah, I felt sorry for Doctors without Borders and the Ukraine who were so determined to enact anti-corruption legislation. The problem, of course, is that the governments of the states who need anti-corruption laws are corrupt. Thus, they claim they are not corrupt, or that corruption is an internal issue and leave it to them to fix it. And because of soverignty rights, the international community has very little power to intervene. Corruption is therefore a very difficult cookie to deal with. To be honest, yes, the Dominican Republic would benefit from anti-corruption measures, but while representing the government of the country we could not admit that in the simulation. In the interest of realism we had to screw you guys over, sorry!
Travis, i agree with your simulation analysis. There were so many diverse interests in the conference that it was impossible to reach a concensus. Our group, Doctors Without Borders, wanted to help the people first and foremost and we felt that anti-corruption and privitization would have the most short-term and long-term positive effects in this arena. However, countries such as Uganda wanted to just look at the economic aspect and pushed trade liberalization about all the other list points. It would be an intresting experiment to have this debate go on for another 5-10 class periods and see where we got at the end of that period.
I wouldnt say that "calling the question" is 'giving up' (as you put it) so much as wanting to move on to some of the other topics.
If we've just voted on something and eliminated it 4-2, discussing the exact same thing again is just a waste of time. Yes, it is an important issue, but there were soooo many others that we could have spent time on instead of dwelling on the same things.
It's great that DwB is so adamant to develop anti-corruption measures, but I think that bringing it up repeatedly just made the other representatives at the conference annoyed with the topic rather than willing to consider another point of view. If we had more time, you could have dropped the issue for a little while, allowed debate to turn to other matters, then later bring it back to things like anti-corruption.
Well, to go back to what Ian said, a country like Uganda is interested in economic development. Something that people might not know because we didn't get to it is that Doctors Without Borders also had trade liberalization as the third point. We agree that it is important to develop the economy, yet in arguing that Uganda should not be asking for help from international organizations, there is a mistake. Uganda's current government is working to fight corruption and have stated that which is different from some of the other countries. Therefore, I think it is completely ok to announce that anti-corruption measures should be taken within the country.
Travis right in that we represented an NGO and at conferences, this is how NGOs work. They continue to fight and bring up the points that are most important.
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