Vedika Krishnankutty won the ‘Best Position Paper” at DIAMUN

This year, a dynamic team from GSIS was nominated to participate at the Dubai International Academy Model United Nations (DIAMUN) from March 2 to March 5, 2023. Our team, along with students from around the globe, came together to collaborate, discuss, and debate current world issues to arrive at feasible and effective solutions. 

Among the almost 800 students from several continents who attended DIAMUN, our student Vedika Krishnankutty from ISC 1 won the “Best Position Paper” on her committee. The other members of the team were Namya Surana, A P Maghizhan, Siddhant Sinha, Shiv Manish Panjabi, and Siddhant Soni. They were commended for their contribution towards exceptional debate in their respective committees.

The UN Model UN Programme seeks to establish and preserve close ties between the UN and Model UN participants around the world. It accomplishes this by encouraging Model UN clubs to take concrete steps to support UN principles and the UN system, by visiting Model UN conferences and sharing firsthand knowledge of what the actual UN is like, and by providing guides and workshops that instruct students on how to make their simulations more accurate.

Vedika Krishnankutty presented the paper on behalf of the committee, Special Conference on Climate Change (SpC-CC), which works towards improving climate policies by exploring innovative measures to improve the global climate and reduce potential negative implications arising from excessive human intervention in the Earth’s climate. At DIAMUN, this special conference committee was introduced for the most advanced delegates, where solutions to various climate change issues were discussed.

The SpC-CC issues that Vedika presented were:

1. Evaluating sustainable measures to improve global urban air quality
2. The question of promoting renewable energies in rural Africa and South America
3. Measures to tackle the global sea pollution crisis

In the discussion with Vedika, she said, “A position paper is one of the most vital parts of a MUN. It discusses the stance that a country has on a particular topic prior to the conference and shows their country’s stance on the given agenda. As the delegate of Japan, I had to make position papers on all the given agendas, which meant I had three position papers to make. In our three-day-long committee sessions, we discussed the solutions to solving the global air pollution crisis, the global sea pollution crisis, and ways to supply rural Africa and South America. Our committee was filled with fruitful debates and lively discussions, and the entire committee thoroughly enjoyed themselves during the session.”

Congratulating Vedika for her best position paper, the chairperson said, “Chairing Vedika Krishnankutty has truly been a moment of pride for me. Her diplomatic and collaborative spirit had me all ears during committee sessions. From her active participation in the committee to the well-written position papers to the overall impact she made, her performance at one of the Gulf’s largest THIMUN-affiliated conferences was remarkable. This, in turn, made her eligible for winning the ‘Best Position Paper’ Award for a plethora of reasons. Her hard work, solution-based approaches, and research-articulated outlook definitely didn’t go unnoticed. I am confident that she will shoulder her responsibilities with the utmost care and dedication in the work she strives to do.”

We congratulate Vedika and the team on this significant achievement and wish them continued success and joy.