“WE THE PEOPLES OF THE UNITED NATIONS ARE DETERMINED”
Those are powerful words. To experienced MUNers among us they will be familiar. To others they will be new. For all of us they should be humbling, as they are the basis on which for the past sixty-four years the United Nations has met.
 
Born at what the world hoped would be the end of fascism, out of the ashes of the second world war, it has seen the end of colonialism, the end of the iron curtain, and its soon, we may all hope, the end of this speech: yet as we gather here, mere metres from the place where just one week ago over one hundred Romanian families were forced to flee their homes, and now this country, by racist violence. Today the world’s economy is in crisis; a result of the greed of bankers and the exploitation of the poor. Wars tear nations apart: both those which are close to home, and those on the other side of the world. Humanity’s two greatest killers are starvation and obesity. The world’s most developed nations continue to be implicated in human rights abuses, while other nations make the preparations for nuclear annihilation of human-kind.
 
These things mean that today co-operation, and being internationally aware are essential qualities we must all strive for.
It can be difficult, sometimes, to imagine what you can do:  you’re just one person out of all the seven billion on this planet. What can you do?
MUN is fun, but it’s also serious. The issues you debate today are real issues. The countries you represent are real. The solutions you reach should be realistic. In the words of US President Barack Obama, “the time has come to set aside childish things”. So step up to the mark. Open up your imaginations, do your bit to bring a new age of prosperity to this world.
This world is far from perfect. This world needs to be fixed.

It only takes one person to change the world, for better, or for worse. Every decision you make changes the world, every decision has consequences.
Today you might decide to impose a global ban on junk food advertising, and yet, you will go home, and McDonalds will still be advertising their Happy Meals, their Big Macs, and their heart-attacks waiting to happen. It might all seem pointless, what change has an hour-long debate made? Yet you have made a stand. You have decided to say no to a big corporation.
 Just as it is said that the single beating of a butterfly’s wing can produce a hurricane, in your own way, you’ve changed the world: you’ve set a ball rolling. Ideas are like viruses. They spread. Eventually somebody will take notice. Somebody will enact the laws to ban junk food advertising, all because of a decision you made: a way you changed the world.
In the words of Mahatma Ghandi “We must be the change we wish to see in the world.”
I will, if I may, read a famous poem, which it seems to me to describe quite precisely the ideal qualities of an MUN delegate

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;
 
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same:
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools;
 
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"
 
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son

 
 
Today we must not consider
Why we cannot solve our problems,
But why we will not.
 
Mr. President, Honorable Delegates,
 
Thank you.