In the simulation, I was assigned to be a representative and speaker from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). I was a little bit nervous in the beginning because this is a graded assignment, but that did not take away from me having prepared as much as I could. I felt that I was provided a reasonable amount of information to help me understand the crisis, and the inclusion of the two worksheets to organize my thoughts and ideas augmented my preparation. With this, I was not able to accomplish what I wanted, and I don’t blame this on the UNHCR nor ARM. I felt that we were both very clear in that acquiring more funds and supplies was crucial to the survival and well being of the Rubits. However, we were not able to acquire funds from any countries. In the beginning, the USDOS and Malil agreed to provide money to the UNHCR refugee camps, but later on, Malil backed out for reasons I am not aware of, and the USDOS refused to supply funds if Malil was not going to. With this, both Gilbia and Budan did not want to provide funds to the refugee camps either, as their proposition was to shut down the camps, enact human rights laws, and build infrastructure. There is only so much I could propose or do besides beg countries for funds, since the UNHCR is not an actual country, and has no power to overthrow a government. I enjoyed hearing the thoughts of my classmates during informal negotiations because I think we all thrive on hearing different ideas and working with and around them in order to craft the best solution possible. I also enjoyed watching people stay true to their country and their countries respective beliefs, ideologies, etc., without their personal perspectives and thoughts getting in the way. Regarding struggles, I really struggled with communication because there were a lot of different groups of people talking during informal negotiations about different things and I think this confused a lot of translations. I think the only thing that should be changed is the setup of the informal negotiations. They are too chaotic and disorganized, which I believe prohibited solution building. In conclusion, I learned that communication really is the most important part of solving a collective predicament because you cannot accomplish anything if your words are lost in translation, or if you misunderstand what people are saying.
