SPS CONFERENCE
United Nations Secuirity Council
Chairs: Fernando Saenz and Paola Cordoba
The United Nations Security Council calls upon the P5 and the Non-permanent members of its committee to gather in an emergency meeting at the UN headquarters to engage in dialogue and reach a multilateral agreement that will put an end to the current threats to global peace. The UNSC, being the only committee with the jurisdiction to call upon force and military action to fulfill its goals and purposes, requires skilled and knowledgeable delegates that will effectively use their own and the committee’s resources, all revolving around extinguishing potential global disputes, and therefore, preventing war. Global peace is threatened once again and it is the UNSC’s responsibility to avert the current situation from escalating into an unstoppable armed conflict.
Topic A: ISIS, The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria
The extremist Islamic State represents a major threat to international security due to its radical methods, and the increasing power it could have only acquired through local governments funding their terrorist operations. ISIS, as a rebel group formed mainly to fight the oppression of the Sunni branch of Islam in countries such as Iraq, is strongly supported through funding and weapons from countries such as Saudi Arabia, the strongest Sunni country. At the same time, the United States funds the “Friends of Syria”, a government-based armed group designed to stop the propagation of the extremist jihad ideology in Syria and parts of Iraq. In the end this has caused a massive conflict between terrorist groups and governmental military forces, resulting in hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties.
Topic B: Ukranian Crisis
After Viktor Yanukovych rejected a trade deal with the European Union in 2013 and accepted another deal with Russia, thousands of citizens started protests around the country arguing that their president had rejected a promising deal that would greatly benefit the economy. After Yanukovich was removed, Petro Poroshenko was elected as the new president of Ukraine, but since he was in opposition to the deal with Russia, conflict arose. Russia doesn’t want to lose its economic ties to Ukraine, as they are a great source of ore, oil, natural gas, and grains, so an incentive to maintain a unilateral symbiotic relationship with Ukraine does exist. Ukraine, being historically and geographically very close to Russia, had a great division in culture and political preferences. The Eastern Side, being closer to Russia, primarily speaks Russian and identify with Russian culture. The Western side, being closer to Europe, has quite different tastes. While the west side of Ukraine was protesting to be part of the EU, Crimea, located in Eastern Ukraine, with is population being greatly pro-Russian, was “peacefully occupied” by armed Russian ground troops as an attempt to accelerate the annexation to Russia, and therefore obtain their resources. After Crimean politicians put Crimea up for a vote and decide what country they wanted to be part of, Russia received the majority of the votes. Russia then declared Crimea, as being part of Russia, all this, without Ukrainian authorization. The International community condemned the whole event as a “Referendum held at gunpoint.” By, now, after various incidents such as shooting down a Malaysian Airlines airplane and killed 298 civilians, many sanctions have been imposed on behalf of the USA and EU on Russia. It is up to the Security Council and the UN to take the lead and prevent a global armed conflict from happen, while engaging in negotiations protecting their national interests.