Thailand Stands Alone in Vicious UNODC Debate

In the second council session of the second day, delegates from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) were finalising their solutions to get education to every corner of the world, including less-developed countries (LDCs) who are not able to educate themselves.

The council reasoned that if they funded governments directly, the money might fall into the hands of corrupt politicians and governments who line their own pockets with the people’s money. As such, they opted instead to provide funding to various Non-Government Organisations (NGOs) in the LDCs. Australia was particularly in favour of this, stating that this would also solve the issue of manpower since the NGOs already have volunteers stationed in numerous parts of the country.

This was all discussed in an unmoderated caucus that was raised by Australia during the session. Not everyone on the council was immediately on board with the idea. In particular, Thailand questioned Australia regarding the involvement of NGOs, voicing the concern that the organisations might be manipulated by corrupt governments. This infuriated Australia and his allies including Fuji, China, Singapore and Japan, who attempted to reassure Thailand that investing in NGOs would be a much safer bet than investing in the governments themselves.

This did not hinder Thailand in his pursuit to stamp out corruption. Thailand was soon left out and singled out on his stance on corruption with every other delegate yielding their time to him. Thailand tried his best to use this time to get back to his point on corruption. He went on to talk about NGOs being manipulated by corrupt governments, making these NGOs corrupt. However this effort was in vain, with only Israel siding with Thailand. The rest of the council continued trying to persuade Thailand to side with their cause.

The debate ended with the council shifting their attention to working on their resolution paper. The delegate of Singapore brought up an unmoderated caucus to discuss it. That is when all hell broke loose. The first problem the council faced was the making of the definitions. Council was unsure what to define. However, this was resolved pretty soon. Then, Thailand asked why the Netherlands’ name was under the signatories when the delegate of the Netherlands had not even received the resolution paper. Thailand went on to accuse China of randomly putting the names of delegates. In response, the delegate of China went out of his way to assure Thailand that he had asked for permission to put the other delegates' names in the signatories column. Though, Thailand still had an issue with the current resolution paper. Due to the fact that his point on corruption had been omitted, Thailand insisted that he would oppose the submitted resolution paper. This caused the debate on corruption to return. Again. And again.

In an interview with the delegate of Thailand, when asked how he felt when most of the council attacked him, he said , “It was clear that it was a planned and targeted attack against me. It seemed like they opposed getting rid of corruption.” He went on to claim that the other delegates wanted corruption. “Maybe they were hung on embracing corruption. It also seemed that they didn’t notice that corruption was a huge threat to their idea of a database,” he continued. Thailand remained unimpressed with the council throughout the interview taking notes on Australia and Singapore—Two of his many opposers.

During the beginning of the council session during the roll call, a rather amusing incident took place between the Chair, who will remain unnamed, and the delegate of China. The delegate of China referred to the Chair as “cher” which is a colloquialism for “teacher” common in Singapore. The chair was shocked by this statement, replying, “I am not your ‘cher’”. In an interview, the Chair said, “[I] was thinking he either forgot this was a MUN (Model United Nations conference) and was completely oblivious to the fact that I'm younger than him”. She went on to state that “He tryna be funny”. From then on however the Chair and the delegate had a lot more peaceful conversations, with the chair helping the delegate to finish the resolution paper.

The council then moved back to the GSL where, lo and behold, the topic of education was brought up for the umpteenth time at this conference by Singapore, slowing council progress. Observers hope that the council will be able to reach a solid consensus to combat the issue of identity-related crimes soon.