Students from the Clark University Model United Nations Program, along with students enrolled in the University’s “United Nations and International Politics” course, made a field visit to United NationsHeadquarters in New York on April 17.
The delegation, led by Political Science Professor Srinivasan Sitaraman, included a visit to the Permanent Mission of Sri Lanka to the United Nations, where the students were briefed by Ambassador Dr. Palitha Kohona and Minister-Counsellor Mr. Waruna Sri Dhanapala on the active role Sri Lanka is playing the Open Working Group on Health and Development.
The Clark group also visited Germany’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations, where they had a fruitful discussion on Germany’s role in the United Nations and its prospects of securing a permanent seat in the U.N. Security Council. The students then met with Ms. Tamara Cummings-John from the Office of Legal Counsel of the United Nations, a former lawyer in the International Criminal Court (ICC), who talked about the challenges of international criminal prosecution and her experiences serving in the Special Court in Sierra Leone and International Criminal Tribunal in Rwanda. Ms. Cummings-John remarked how she found the Clark students to be “an inspiration and a reminder of how passionate we should all be about the work of this Organization [U.N.] and the ICC.”
After the briefings, the students received a tour of U.N. headquarters and briefly observed the proceedings that were being held at the Trusteeship Council meeting room.
Students taking part in the trip included Lauren Meininger ’17; Patrick Burchat ’15; Cassandra Grandeau ’16; Xinyun Zhang ’15; Selena Ahmed ’16; Wandong Yang ’16; Yohan Senarath ’14; Katherine Dixon ’16; Brenna Dougherty ’15; Maria Zander ’17; Bethany Burgess ’17; Bongani Jeranyama ’15; Seble Alemu ’14; Jake Kailey ’14; Lance Yau ’14; Kevin Kim ’16; Stephanie Vachon ’16; Dulara de Alwis ’15; Riley Bright ’15; Nusrat Islam ’17; Savannah Donohue ’17; Corie Welch ’17; Matt Isihara ’14; Spring Pillsbury ’17; Dea Dodi ’17; Lisaflora Lara ’17; Hasini Assiriyage ’17; and Michael Pierce ’16.
This field trip to the United Nations was made possible with the support from the Francis A. Harrington Fund.
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