Cumbre Iberoamericana

Tema 1: Reforzando la cooperación sur-sur y triangular en Iberoamérica

¿Qué entendemos por cooperación sur-sur y triangular? La cooperación sur-sur es la que se establece entre dos países de América Latina con diferente desarrollo relativo. Entre las ventajas que presenta la cooperación sur-sur podemos encontrar la disfusión de experiencias exitosas entre países de la región, el aumento de la cobertura de la asistencia técnica por efecto de la cofinanciación, la disminución de las barreras culturals asociadas a la transferencia tecnológica, la disminución de las barreras culturales asociadas a la transferencia tecnológica, la disminución de los costes de operación y transacción o la mayor facilidad para asumir modelos de reforma institucional o aplicación de políticas públicas.

Cuando la cooperación sur-sur se encuentra financiada por algún país donante con altos índices de desarrollo dicha cooperación se denomina triangular.

Tema 2: La protección del medio ambiente y el desarrollo sostenible: el cambio climático y la importancia de las energías renovables.

El cambio climático es la mayor amenaza medioambiental a la que se enfrenta la humanidad. Por ello es importante que los países iberoamericanos trabajen conjuntamente para lograr un modelo energético sostenible. Es preciso apostar por una renovación energética capaz de reducir las emisiones de CO2 para evitar un cambio climático peligroso y en el que la opción de la nergía nuclear esté definitivamente descartada.

La sustitución de las enrgías sucias por sostenibles precisa de la paralización de los nuevos proyectos de construcción de centrales térmicas dada su gran contribución al cambio climático, así como el cierre progresivo de ls centrales nucleares y el apoyo a la generación de electricidad mediante fuentes de energía renovables. Para ello es necesario eliminar las barreras existentes para su desarrollo a gran escala y contar con el papel que los ciudadanos pueden desempeñar en la transformación del sistema energético.

Security Council:

Natural Resources and Water Security

Every year our world is being populated by more and more people, our resources are being consumed at a faster rate than they are being provided, and limited natural goods are being unequally divided. Those were the reasons, which led to the birth of the Club of Rome, a Think Thank who tried to point at such problems. Little has however been done and it is more important than ever that a re-definition and re-thinking takes place, since those matters bare menaces with calamitous risks. One especially, water, the worlds most precious resource and of yearly reduced availability.  Water doesn't just bare a high security risk but a danger to life.

Women and Peace in Post-Conflict Areas

Achieving and maintaining peace is the world’s goal which can’t be achieved unless all citizens are actively involved in this process. Sustainable peace in post-conflict situations or areas is possible if the focus lays on women’s both security and participation as women have experienced a disproportionate share of war’s consequences. Taking into consideration the gender-differentiated impact of war, it seems necessary for women to be part of peace-building in post-conflict areas due to the important role they play in economic, political and social development.
The international community has to pay attention to the urgent issue that targets the prevention of widespread systematic targeting of women because, in most contexts, this spills over in post-conflict period, as Ms. Ines Alberdi, the Executive Director of UN Development Fund for Women has noted.

Human Rights Council:

Climate Changes and Migration - the Environmental Refugees

An environmental refugee is a person displaced by climatically induced environmental disasters. Such disasters may be evidence of human-influenced ecological change and disruption of Earth's climate system.  
The efforts of the international community to adequately address the global climate change have so far rarely put in the focus of the attention the cases of the population that is an actual victim of this change- millions of people whose life is rapidly changed by natural disasters or new climate conditions, people who are forced to leave their homes and have lost their everyday life becoming a new group of vulnerable persons, refugees of environmental conditions.

The UN estimates at least 20 million environmental refugees worldwide—more than those displaced by war and political repression combined. According to scholars three major types of environmental refugees can be classified - environmental refugee due to disasters, due to expropriation of environment, due to deterioration of environment. The UNHCR counts 8,400,000 refugees worldwide at the beginning of 2006, but at the same time the international community fails to adequately address this new wave of migration due to lack of legal recognition.

The United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (the Geneva Convention) definition of a refugee does not comply with the climate refugees. Consequently, environmental refugees do not fall under the mandate of the UNHCR and cannot be granted refugee status under international law. However the migration flows related with environmental alternations are alarmingly increasing every day, together with the expansion of different environmental changes such as deforetisation, desertification, extreme weather events – factors that all together are causing numerous humanitarian problems, conflicts and a whole new wave of people, forced to leave their natural habitat and replace.  

The focus of the 2010 MUNUSAL Human Right Council will be finding definite and adequate solutions for the migration flows caused by climate changes, the legal status of the environmental refugees, the international engagement and its future initiatives on protection of climate migrants and preventing further migration flows, as well as implementation of policies with multiply effect, enhanced management for the problem, expanded approach to the issue addressing root causes, promotion of sustainable development.  
 
Repression and Brutality, Forced Disappearances and Gender Violence, Addressing the key Violations of Human Rights in Central America.

In recent years, the countries of Central America have been backsliding badly in respect to human rights.  Naturally, this has resulted in severe social unrest.  If this is not dealt with quickly and efficiently by the United Nations, then Central America faces the risk of once again being ripped open in bloody civil war. 

The brutal culture of repression of human rights across almost the entire continent, has proved to be one of the most severe problems.  Recent reports have shown the existence of death squads that have been killing suspected members of youth gangs in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador.  The gang culture in Central America, a legacy of the abhorrent and self-serving US policies in the region, may be a stain on the continent’s reputation, but the real concern to human rights activists is the conduct of the authorities.  Off duty police officers are being commissioned to operate in death squads, carrying out some form of grotesque “social purge” against the young members of Central America’s gangs.  With most people entering gangs in Central America due to gross levels of poverty and lack of available resources, this policy of the ‘mano duro’ by the authorities, repressing the human rights of gang members, must be stopped.  For some form of stability to be ensured in Central America, a policy of equal human rights, in whatever shape is vitally needed.   

Forced disappearances have a long and tragic legacy in Central America.  In the 1960s, the US helped to place the infrastructure not just for the murder but also for the ‘disappearance’ of a large number of the civilian population.  The sad reality is that forced disappearances are still today a frequent and appalling violation of human rights across Central America.   

Gender based violence and sexual violence equally serves as one the most severe and traumatic human rights violations across Central America.  In a 2009 report by the UNDP, it was assessed that Central America is the region of the highest levels of non-political violence worldwide.  The sad reality is that most of this is ‘invisible’ taking place in the home.  Over half the women killed in Nicaragua in the first half of 2009 were victims of domestic violence. 

Central America is region where human rights hang on a knife-edge.  Delegates of MUNUSAL 2010 will need to see these issues both as worldwide phenomena and as phenomena specific to Central America. Until basic human rights can be assured to the people of Central America, the chances of stability in the region remain very limited. 

African Union

1.) Reviewing the Zimbabwean Power Sharing Agreement

At the summit in Sharm El-Sheikh, following the Zimbabwean election in March 2008, the AU decided after intense debates in its resolution from the 1 Of July 2008 against exclusion of Zimbabwe from the AU, sanctions and any other kind of punishment.

But instead the AU only called Mugabe’s Zanu-PF and Tsvangirai’s MDC to create a government of national unity, hopping that such agreement would improve the humanitarian situation in the country.

Recent events such as the temporary split up of the unity government and the ongoing violence against MDC follower and the further deterioration of the humanitarian situation suggest that there is once again a need of bringing this topic before this committee. 

2.) Food production and food trade. Ideas for free trade zones

Africa has in the past couple of decades been viewed to have many problems and most of them concern the food aspect - the malnutrition and starvation of vast regions that due to these processes produce migration waves and conflicts. 

Africa has the capability to produce food and has the logistic ability to import food. It is not true the cliché saying that there is NO FOOD and therefore starvation and hunger are triggered. The problem is in the money which is needed to either buy the food from a neighbor state in Africa or to import it from a wealthy North-West hemisphere state. In the last couple of years the problem with the food has increased due to the fact that the energy production companies and states have increased their prices on energy commodities – meaning mainly oil. When you have high prices of oil and you need food - you have to pay sometimes more for an aided food than for an import from a neighbor state because of the price for the transportation of the food. 

Another food aspect concerns the fishery business which has enlarged around the African continent and has become a problem for the indigenous people of the Africa - due to the numerous big trawler ships, food has again become the first and most suffering commodity for the people in Africa. This is one of the reasons you now have maritime piracy in some coastal regions around Africa. 

African states can start doing the things that most of the states worldwide are doing – a process you make call “from necessity to progress”. There can be a simple example on this issue by remembering the post 2nd World War time when from necessity of having peace and trust many two-state and multi-state companies and organizations were formed with strict regulations on the usage of the main sources of warfare at that time - oil, steel, coal - in order not to be used for warfare. After there "needed" formation you have the formation of ideas for progress - the processes that started after the EU Organization for Coal and Steel. These processes are happening nowadays in the Middle-East - more precisely among the GCC states (Gulf Cooperation Council). You can also see such processes in the agreements between India, China and Russia, as well as with the USA and Brazil. 

This topic is viewed as a messenger that can bring peace - a VERY HIGH LEVEL priority in Africa. The talks for this will inevitably start in the coming years - the only thing that puts them to a halt is the states’ progress due to nationalization of energy production facilities and the progress of the economies of some states in Africa. 

In terms of the climate changes - the African continent will have to take some steps in order to have the ability to work for its green future - meaning not only eco-initiatives but also the subsidiary of companies and processes for the production of food.

ECOSOC

1. Food Security under attack by the Economic Crisis and intertwined with Environmental Challenges

Actions need to imperatively sustain words. Declarations, promises and commitments must be delivered on. Such trivial statements gain a significantly more nuanced and deeper meaning when we confront the naked truth – to illustrate, it must be emphasised that during the three days of talks on the occasion of the recent UN food summit – the outcome of which was a mere declaration of renewed commitment – 51,000 more children are estimated to have died of hunger, one every five seconds (UN News Centre).

In the even more challenging context of the economic crisis and of environmental instability, there cannot be a better time to consider the security of our food supply, starting with the most acute of the crises.

2. The primary role of Education in the development of Intercultural/ Interfaith Dialogue.

Undeniably, education today shapes the world of tomorrow. It is an issue of such crucial importance that by addressing the challenge of re-designing our notion of education, we shall have a strong say as to the nature of the world we live in: education can pave the way to peace and reconciliation; it can steer generations on the road to mutual understanding and plant the seeds of harmony.

Civic and peace education, religious and interfaith concepts, global and cross-cultural history, human rights education are key components to efforts aimed at fostering intercultural/interfaith respect and at forging a common vision of peace.

United Nations Press Committee (UNPC):

In the society in which we live at present, the "society of the information", the mass-media play an essential role in any environment in which we evolve. The United Nations also counts in its rows with an institution that takes charge of coordinating and channels all the information that is generated daily. This task carries out it the UNNC (United Nations News Center). In the same way the UNNC works, our model will also have an official cabinet of Press formed by a mixed team of students of Journalism at the Papal University of Salamanca (UPSA) and of Translation and Documentation at the University of Salamanca (USAL) that will design and publish a newspaper during the days of the model through the one we will inform the participants about the daily development of the different committees.