Honorable Delegates,

The first Baltic Model United Nations (BALMUN) in 2008 was truly a success so that it is now the logical consequence to continue this education furthering and consensus creating event in 2009.

It is the objective of our second BALMUN conference to assemble young people with different ethnical backgrounds, with different cultural characteristics, and different wants and needs regarding their idea of a globalized world to exchange these ideas while not speaking just for themselves but for the country they represent as well as the one they come from. Based on the foundation of our world’s diversity it is the UN idea to create consensus and find agreements through bonds and partnerships between countries. These partnerships principally include common points of views on important issues of our today’s world but actually contain a lot more. We often underestimate what we can learn from each other, so that it is important to share expertise, knowledge and experiences. Our today's world is heavily depending on such an exchange of capacities. Furthermore, these partnerships assemble bridges which reach across the oceans to unite our world. Building bridges between countries is essential regarding the regional challenges that have to be faced in a globalized world. Since regional challenges and single country issues are more and more becoming global challenges it is also even more necessary not just to foster already consisting relationships but to especially establish new ones. Building bridges between all continents based upon the cooperation of nations is the task on which the focus of the upcoming BALMUN conference shall lay on. These bridges shall not just connect peoples and areas but much rather offer the possibility to solve today’s global problems like environmental pollution and set up international regulations for e.g. genetics. In addition to that recent conflicts have drawn our attention and concern which leads to the fact that today’s facets of conflicts have to be examined so that solutions for preventing and solving conflicts can be found.

For me as the Secretary General of BALMUN 09 it is an honor to serve in this position for the second time and I am already looking forward to the fruitful debates and great exemplary resolutions which might be more than just recommendations and help to expand the number of existing bridges one day. BALMUN grew from the idea to be a special MUN conference which gives the opportunity to develop, write and pass resolutions in a personal and thus productive way. I hope that this year’s conference theme “Building Bridges” will therefore help to make connections between countries with first of all building bridges between the delegates and their points of views.

Yours sincerely,

 

Torge Schwandt
(Secretary General BALMUN 2009)

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