Friday morning, 9am, saw the start of a day during which around a hundred students from the international masters courses at Kedge's Paris campus became ambassadors to the United Nations and had to defend the interests of a country on a given subject.
After a magnificent introduction by Stéphane Le Diraison, skipper in the next Vendée Globe, the students tried to find solutions to counter the loss of biodiversity in the oceans. A vast and complex subject for a day of intense negotiation around the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 13 and 14.
To determine the most UN-friendly delegation (in terms of compliance with UN rules and protocol, leadership and oratory skills, for example), a group of observers with a passion for geopolitics assessed and monitored the debates: Fiammetta Cascioli, Director of the MSc Business Transformation for Sustainability, Michelle Van Weeren, Professor of Sustainable Finance, Mehdi Amiri Aref, Academic Advisor for the MSc International Business Programme, and Alain Lagrange, Expert Advisor for Marine and Polar Sciences at the French Ministry of Higher Education and Research (MESR). They were accompanied by two graduates, Gabriela Rocha Da Costa from Imerys and Adam Lewicki from Sulitest, winners of the previous edition, who were able to share their valuable advice with the participants.
The game was run entirely by the team from the simonu association on the Bordeaux campus, which was running the simulation for the first time. Special mention should go to the students involved: Tiana Bakic, Snehal Desmukh and session chair Noha Nouffe Voisin.
The Russian delegation particularly stood out during this simulation for its quality and commitment. Well done to Eugenia Urdaneta, Éléa Murais, Alice Pemha and John Stephen, who won this second edition of the Paris SimONU.
