- In the simulation, I played a minor role as a negotiator but my main role was behind the scenes; conducting research and developing a strategy that our group, Association for Refugees and Minorities (ARM), would use to try to reach our goals. I feel like thoroughly researching the topic and coming up with a tactic beforehand greatly helped our group and we were able to take advantage, in a sense, of other groups who were unprepared and did not developing their own strategy.
- I felt very prepared coming into the simulation because I had read over the online description and was able to wrap my mind around the conflict as a whole. I feel like ultimately we were able to achieve our goals. As ARM, our main goals involved stopping the refugee crisis as a whole and stopping the discrimination of Rubits still living in Budan. It really was not that difficult to achieve our goals because of the transformation of Malil, going from supporting Budan to going directly against them. I think another reason that we were able to achieve our goals is because we as an NGO, were a neutral party without ties to any countries. This allowed us to freely negotiate with all parties and ultimately helped us to achieve our goals.
- I greatly enjoyed the simulation. Specifically, I enjoyed it because we were able to put some of the things that we learned about into a “real world” scenario. I also really enjoyed problem solving to develop tactics to try to convince other parties to think one way.
- One thing that I struggled with is that I feel like my group had a limited role being an NGO that is unable to fund any measures. I also struggled because people in other groups would just deny things that were true and stated in the simulation description. This made it hard to negotiate and definitely stalled our progress.
- I think the simulation could be improved by more thoroughly presenting the facts of the simulation before starting. I think this could solve some of conflicts stated above such as groups denying facts. Secondly, I do not think many people actually took the time to read the simulation description and I think this greatly change the simulation; for example many people did not realize that Malil was a global superpower and had similar power to Russia.
- I learned more in depthly how negotiations between countries work on the global scale when they are trying to solve a global issue. I also learned just how much power both the United States and the UN security have. Coming into the simulation I knew that the United States was a global superpower but I was surprised how in this simulation other countries let the United States kind of walk all over them. I would be curious to see if that is actually how it is in real negotiations between countries or if more countries stand up to and go against the United States.
