Committee Description
The World Health Organization is a specialized agency that operates within the United Nations. It aims to improve health on an international scale, guided by values of universality of accessibility, ensuring quality of life, and international cooperation. The WHO has served to advance the world scientifically and medically since its conception.
Delegates will discuss critical topics that challenge the social, economic, and political areas of modern healthcare. Furthermore, delegates must find ways to balance the perspectives of their respective member states and find viable solutions to pressing threats to human health and safety. As a result, delegates will cultivate an understanding of existing inequalities in global healthcare and how human wellbeing is fundamentally tied to global issues as a whole.
Topic 1 - Antibiotic Resistance
Under Topic 1, Antibiotic Resistance, delegates are tasked to craft a plan to defend the efficacy of a critical medical innovation. Delegates will first need to recognize and come to consensus on the sources of antibiotic resistance. Discussions will touch on the role of agricultural industries and how antibiotics are handled in food safety, as well as problematic patterns of antibiotic usage on an international scale. Delegates will consider and weigh the priorities of the WHO and identify where different needs and perspectives intersect, and where they conflict. With antibiotics and medicine being connected to a plethora of other issues, including economic development, international policy, and existing inequalities in society, delegates will need to debate the cost effectiveness of each solution. Embodying the goals of the WHO, delegates should work together to decide the best course of action in preventing resistance to antibiotics.
Topic 2 - Neglected Tropical Diseases
Under Topic 2, Neglected Tropical Diseases, delegates turn their attention towards an underrepresented, but dangerous set of conditions. Delegates will enhance their understanding of the intersection between health and the safety of resources such as clean water and sanitization. Additionally, they will discuss the challenges of eradicating NTDs, especially for the most vulnerable and impacted populations. Beyond physical health and wellbeing, delegates should consider how discrimination and stigma from NTDs impacts the lives of individuals. With NTDs being so deeply intertwined with global issues, delegates must take on the task of balancing a multitude of perspectives and needs. Delegates will face the challenges of the invisibility of these diseases, identify crucial stakeholders in the discussion, and collaborate with one another to tackle the topic of NTDs on an international level.
WHO Country Matrix
The Dais
Sylvia (she/her/herself) is a grade 11 student currently studying at Branksome Hall. She signed up for her school’s MUN club in early ninth grade and represented Bahrain at her first conference, SSUNS 2021. Ever since, her passion for MUN has only grown. As an executive on her school’s MUN team, she is in charge of mentoring new delegates. When she’s not working on MUN, you can find her writing poetry and creative fiction, scribbling in her sketchbook, or attempting to sight read her favorite songs on the piano. She loves GAs, seedless grapes, and the color purple. If she had to choose, her favorite MUN opening would be “From the movie High School Musical, ‘we are all in this together’.” Her biggest flex is maintaining a Duolingo streak for over a year.
Sylvia Zhang
Director
Iliyan Gangani is a 15 years old youth politician from Toronto, Ontario currently enrolled at Crescent School. He is the Founder and President of the global, youth led, organisation Eyeview Politics, which empowers youth with accessibility and opinion through the means of social media, in the world of politics. Iliyan has also founded an additional two youth-led organisations with the priority of equal representation of minorities and the upliftment of the future generation. Iliyan has competed in various Model United Nations conferences throughout and prior to his political endeavours. His favourite being the annual SSUNS conference held in Montreal and his most challenging being Harvard, held in Boston. He is able to translate the skills Model UN has given him into his professional life, working with the Liberal Party of Canada and Ontario. His major passion evidently lies in law and politics with his hobbies revolving around productive debate.
Iliyan Gangani
Chair
Megan Kwan (she/her) is currently a grade 11 student at Branksome Hall. Megan first signed up for Model UN in grade 9 and attended her first in-person conference SOMA, representing Italy. In GAs, she is most known for using cringy intro lines in her speeches. Her favourite: "From the movie High School Musical, We are all in this together.” Not only is Model UN one of Megan's biggest passions but as well Debate, Deca, video games and more! When she is not at home, she is usually swimming, running or at the gym.
Megan Kwan
Assistant Director