Six Years of MUN Didn’t Prepare Me for WIMUN
I’ve been doing Model UN for six years. I’ve sat through opening ceremonies in hotel ballrooms, debated resolutions in conference rooms, and written more position papers than I can count. I thought I had a pretty good sense of what the experience would look like at WIMUN. I was wrong in the best possible way.
The United Nations, Actually
The opening ceremony was held at the actual United Nations headquarters in New York City. I want to be specific about that because it matters. This was not a building named after the UN or a venue designed to resemble it. It was the real building, with the real flags, in the real rooms where diplomats work every day. Sitting in that space at the start of the week, surrounded by delegates from countries across the globe, I felt the significance of what we were about to do in a way I had not expected.
This Isn’t a Simulation. It’s How the UN Actually Works
What genuinely set WIMUN apart from every other conference I’ve attended was the model itself. Most MUN conferences simulate a version of the UN process; they borrow the structure and the language, but the competitive mechanics underneath are entirely their own invention. Delegates are rewarded for strong speeches and co-sponsoring winning resolutions. There are the best delegate awards. The whole culture pushes you to outperform the person next to you.
WIMUN does something very different: it replicates how the UN actually operates. That means working toward a single consensus document rather than competing resolutions. It means no delegate can be talked over or steamrolled. It means the process is slow and deliberate and sometimes frustrating, because that’s what real multilateral negotiation looks like. After six years of MUN, this was the first time I felt like I was actually learning how diplomacy works rather than how to win a debate.
Representing Guatemala on the Sendai Framework
I represented Guatemala in my committee, where we discussed the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction. For those unfamiliar, the Sendai Framework is the UN’s global blueprint for reducing disaster risk between 2015 and 2030, addressing everything from early warning systems to how countries rebuild infrastructure after crises. Representing Guatemala gave me a specific lens on the topic. As a country that regularly faces earthquakes, hurricanes, and flooding, Guatemala has a real stake in how the international community approaches disaster preparedness and response.
Preparing that position required me to think beyond the abstract. I wasn’t arguing policy, but I was representing the interests of a real population of people who live with disaster risk as an everyday reality. That responsibility shaped how I listened in committee, how I responded to other delegates’ proposals, and how seriously I took the consensus process. A framework that worked on paper but ignored the realities of smaller, more vulnerable nations wasn’t actually a good framework.
The People Made It Real
What I didn’t anticipate was how much the people would shape the experience. Delegates came from countries all over the world, and unlike some conferences where international participation is limited, WIMUN genuinely felt global. I had conversations in committee and in the hallways with people whose countries and lived experiences were completely different from my own, and who were nonetheless grappling with the same questions I was: how do you build agreements that actually hold? How do you advocate for your country without losing sight of shared goals?
Those conversations were the part of WIMUN that no position paper can prepare you for. They’re also the part I’ll remember longest.
I came to WIMUN thinking I already understood Model UN. What I found was something closer to the real thing than I’d ever experienced, and a reminder of why the work of organizations like UNA-USA matters. The UN isn’t a perfect institution, but it is the one we have, and learning to engage with it seriously, as a young person, felt like exactly the right place to start.
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Rida Karim served as a UNA-USA Delegate to the 2026 WFUNA International Model UN Conference in New York City.
