From increasing the United Nation’s budget for environmental conservation in the Amazon to bringing geoengineering to developing nations, committees in this year’s Yale Model United Nations (YMUN) Conference spent four days discussing solutions to some of the world’s most pressing issues.

Eighteen students traveled to New Haven to compete in the annual YMUN Conference, which was held from January 19 to 22. More than 2,000 delegates from over 80 schools and 40 countries participated. Through debate and diplomacy, the delegates worked together to solve a variety of challenges.

Each delegate represents a country in simulated U.N. committee sessions. Delegates prepared for the conference by writing position papers and speeches to present in their committees. During the conference, they worked to identify other delegates with similar perspectives and form “blocs” to create draft resolutions enumerating proposed solutions. For example, Katie Qian ’26’s bloc crafted a resolution entitled “DESTINED 2,” an acronym for “Development of Eco-friendly Sustainable Technology and Innovation for Negating Environmental Degradation 2.” Each committee ultimately voted for the best resolution.

Awards were given to delegates in each committee for excellence in participation, skill, and sportsmanship. Jason Shan ’23, Ben Who ’24, Aaliyah Wang ’25, and Vanessa Guerra ’24 won Best Delegate awards in their committees. Maadhavan Prasanna ’25 and Petr Berlizov ’24 were awarded Outstanding Delegate, and Yixi Zou ’25, Parth Jain ’24, Vladislav Grass ’24, Meilan Antonucci ’24, and Julian Zhang ’26 were awarded Honorable Mention. Teo Everts ’26 was awarded Honorable Mention in the YMUN essay contest on the theme of “Unlikely Partnerships”, for his essay, “Copernicus: The Unlikely partnership between science and religion.”

This year’s YMUN was a new experience for most participants, due to a two-year hiatus during the pandemic. Ethan Choi ’26 said, “The [meetings] between delegates from different parts of the world made the social aspect of YMUN fun. I loved the Delegate Dance and the late-night team meetings and debriefs, in particular. The trip as a whole was a great way for underclass students to get to know students from other grades and to learn from them.” Shan ’23 added, “What is so unique about YMUN is having space, and time to talk about complex issues from various international perspectives in such depth. Where else would you have nine hours carved out of the day to discuss and write legislation to protect domestic workers?”