Distinguished Delegates,

Welcome to the 2022 Change the World Model United Nations (CWMUN).
As your committee Dais, we are looking forward to meet you and to hear your ideas about how to solve international
problems.

The United Nations (UN) depends on the cooperation and goodwill of its 193 Member States.

Because each State has unique interests and concerns, it is challenging to write, negotiate and pass resolutions. Every
stage of the process demands creativity and diplomacy.

You will be discussing this topic:

- Measures to take urgent action to reverse the devastating impact of

COVID-19
on children and young people.

While we may all lead different lives and face different struggles, we have to bear in mind that we all share the same
world and the same resources. Whether it is environmental problems or political unrest, what is happening in the world
concerns all of us. Only through mutual understanding, unity, and collaboration we can lay the foundations of a
worthier world.

As your committee Dais, we will work to keep the committees running smoothly. We will do our best to help you
understand the procedures and to ensure that the perspectives of all delegates are heard and respected.

Sincerely,
CW MUN

2
What is this activity about?
Model United Nations is a role-playing game. Your task is to impersonate a diplomat of the
assigned State and present the perspective of this State’s current government.

What should you do now?

Before the Simulation, you should write down and bring with you:
- Handbook, a collection of relevant UN resolutions, reports, academic studies, and news
from reliable media. - Some topics for Moderated Caucus debates, i.e. for short formal
debates which should cover narrow aspects of each topic. For example, within the topic
Violence against women Delegates can hold a caucus Ways of preventing genital mutilation.

- Ideas for the Resolution, i.e. at least two or three paragraphs that your State would like to
include in the preamble and/or in the main body of the Resolution. You should also learn
Rules of procedure.

What will you do during the Simulation?

In Moderated Caucus you will hold short formal debates (usually 10-15 minutes long) on
details of each topic. Delegates will present the policy and solutions of the represented States
in very short (usually one minute) speeches. In Unmoderated Caucus, you will informally
engage with other Delegates to agree on your policies and solutions and to write draft
resolutions together as a Coalition. Draft resolutions will be checked and possibly edited by
Chair and Director to conform to all formal requirements. Eventually, Coalitions will present
their draft resolutions to the whole Committee. Other Delegates will debate and then vote for
or against. The scope for the Committee as a whole is to produce a resolution.

What is a resolution?
A Resolution is a very specific document, built of Preambulatory and Operative clauses,
expressing the will of a particular UN Committee agreed upon by its Member States.
3
Resolutions are central to the UN and thus MUN gives all participants the opportunity to
understand the process of creating them. Please seize this opportunity and prepare in advance
at least one or two paragraphs per each topic! Sample resolution: Resolution 2349 (2017)
https://undocs.org/S/RES/2349(2017)

Tips (!)
Learn about your State from the CIA World Factbook, from the official website of your
State’s permanent mission to the United Nations, and from other government websites (for
example the website and social media profiles of the Royal Family or President, Prime
Minister, Ministry of Foreign Affairs...). Make sure to know as much as possible about the
foreign relations of your State! Consider that at the United Nations, States generally lean
towards their own geopolitical blocks: Western, Former Soviet, African, Middle Eastern,
Asian, Latin American... Consider also organizations such as the European Union (EU),
African Union, Arab League, Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), The Union
of South American Nations (USAN)...

REMEMBER!
Your task is to present the official position of your assigned state. Misrepresenting this
position and/or representing your private views is against the rules, even if you do not agree
with your State’s position. In any case, you must not hyperbolize nor satirize the position of
your State. Humor, and especially sarcasm, is generally not typical for formal writing nor
formal debates. Although MUN welcomes wit and smart puns, please always be extremely
considerate when using humor.

People to follow:
UN official account: https://twitter.com/UN

4
1. STRUCTURE AND FUNCTIONING OF UNICEF:

UNICEF (United Nation Children’s Fund) is a United Nation agency, which works in the
developmental and humanitarian fields, in order to improve children’s welfare worldwide. It
was created on December 11th, 1946, through a Resolution n. 57(I) of the United Nations
General Assembly, to support children particularly hit by War World II. Since then, it has
pursued the idea that “there are no enemy children”, as stated by its first Executive Director,
Maurice Pate.
In 1947, UNICEF received its first private donation, and to this day, its financial resources
are mainly distributed as follows:
● core resources for Results (RR), dedicated to long-term initiatives;
● other resources (regular), used for non-emergency programmes and strategies;
● other resources (emergency), for facing specific crises.
As to its structure, UNICEF has a governing body, the Executive Board, whose role is to
supervise its policies and budgets, as well as review its activities, and it communicates with
the Secretariat through the mediation of the Bureau, composed of the President and four Vice-
Presidents, representing each one of the five regional groups and elected by the Executive
Board.
The Bureau supervises administrative and functional matters and meets daily during the
Executive Board sessions, otherwise, monthly. In 1953, UNICEF became a permanent
United Nations agency and, as a consequence, long-term projects were promoted, such as
campaigns against children's most common diseases, in poorer countries, as leprosy. In the
years 1956-1961, UNICEF launched a series of projects aiming at protecting and supporting
children’s nutrition and education, which led to the awarding of the Nobel Prize for “The
promotion of brotherhood among Nations”. In 1990, just a year after the adoption of the
Convention on the Rights of the Child by the United Nations, UNICEF summoned the World
Summit for Children, the largest meeting ever of world leaders within the United Nations,
which urged its participants to adopt the Declaration on the Survival, Protection and
Development of Children. According to the United Nations sources, “It was the first time in
history when a Summit-level meeting was held exclusively to address children's issues”.
The main themes tackled by the 71 world leaders involved, concerned family planning, basic
education, children’s health, children’s protection within armed conflicts and alleviation of
poverty. From 2005 to 2010, UNICEF was also a main actor in fighting the spread of HIV
and the development of AIDS among children, launching the “United for children, united
against AIDS'' campaign. Today, UNICEF’s greatest challenges concern the climate crisis
and Covid-19 pandemic and its effects. Since 2019, it has encouraged governments,

5
businesses and leaders to diminish gas emissions, invest in climate adaptation and involve
young petitioners in the negotiations and decisions concerning the climate crisis. On the other
hand, as a response to the pandemic, UNICEF contributes to awareness campaigns
concerning the importance of social distance and sanitary precautions to contain the infection,
and, most importantly, it is part of COVAX (Vaccine Global Access Facility), the
international plan aiming at distributing vaccines globally.

2. TOPIC

The topic under discussion in this Committee will be the following:

“Measures to take urgent action to reverse the devastating impact of COVID-19

on children and young people” .

Almost two years into the pandemic, the widespread impact of COVID-19 continues to
deepen, increasing poverty and entrenching inequality, especially among the youngest. While
some countries are recovering and rebuilding looking with hope to the future, for many others
COVID-19 remains a crisis. The human rights of all children are under threat to a degree that
has not been seen in more than a generation.

Before going into details of what UNICEF has previously done to tackle the issue and what
it aims at doing in the future, we have to understand the context of the matter under
discussion.

COVID-19 is the biggest crisis for children in UNICEF's history, reversing hard-won
progress. Without action, the world faces a lost decade for children, leaving the Sustainable
Development Goals an impossible dream. In less than two years, 100 million more children
have fallen into poverty, a 10 percent increase since 2019. Also, by September 2021,
schoolchildren around the world have lost an estimated 1.8 trillion hours of in-person learning
due to COVID-related school closures, which will have profound long-term, unequal social
and economic effects. At the peak of the pandemic, 1.8 billion children lived in the 104
countries where violence prevention and response services were seriously disrupted. Also,
by October 2020, the pandemic had disrupted or halted critical mental health services in 93
percent of countries worldwide and over 23 million children missed out on essential vaccines
in 2020, the highest number since 2009.

6
UNICEF calculates child poverty by two distinct but complementary measures: children
living in monetary poor households and multidimensional poverty (deprivations in at least
one of the following: education, health, housing, nutrition, sanitation and water). The
COVID-19 pandemic is reversing progress in the fight against child poverty. In a best-case
scenario based on past trends, it will take seven to eight years to recover and return to pre-
COVID child poverty levels. The deep disparity in recovery from the pandemic is widening
the gap between richer and poorer countries. While richer countries are recovering, poorer
countries are saddled with debt and development gains are falling behind. Even before the
pandemic, around 1 billion children worldwide, and half of all children in developing
countries, suffered at least one severe deprivation, without access to minimum levels of
education, health, housing, nutrition, sanitation, or water.

Besides the fight against child’s poverty, child protection is also one of the main pillars of
UNICEF's activity. Even before COVID-19, violence was all-too common in the lives of
children, affecting at least 1 billion children every year. All indications suggest that the
disruptions and public health measures associated with the pandemic may have increased the
frequency and intensity of this violence. At the same time, children have been cut off from
many of the positive and supportive relationships they rely on when in distress, including at
school, in the extended family or the community. At the peak of the pandemic, 1.8 billion
children lived in the 104 countries where violence prevention and response services were
seriously disrupted.

Furthermore, the pandemic has harmed the nutrition, diets and food security of children and
adolescents, especially for those living in poverty with multiple vulnerabilities. Children’s
diets have long been inadequate and the pandemic has made children’s diets even worse.
Quarantine measures, deteriorating economic conditions of families, and school closures
have led to dramatically increased food insecurity. Economic situations have indeed forced
families to resort to difficult food-based coping strategies to manage limited food resources.

Therefore, after having analyzed the situation of children before and during the pandemic,
UNICEF suggests that actions must be taken now in order for the best-case scenario to
become a reality.

UNICEF, commemorating this year its 75th year of activity, has developed a report laying
out the pragmatic solutions in order to tackle the issues mentioned above. UNICEF Executive
Director Henrietta Fore stated that “the global response so far has been deeply unequal and

7
inadequate. The world now stands at a crossroads. The actions we take now will determine
the well-being and rights of children for years to come.”

UNICEF is convinced that it is the time where the Convention on the Rights of the Child and
the Sustainable Development Goals must be realized in their entirety. Therefore, in order to
prevent and contain such tragic effects, the Committee suggests a strategic agenda, articulated
in four points.

Firstly, an inclusive recovery plan. This plan involves interventions by international

governments, whose role is to supervise programmes involving children, both protecting the
most vulnerable ones, and avoiding spending cuts in actions with such purpose. From a
financial perspective, governments are also invited to invest resources in sustainable and
inclusive recovery, encouraging solutions that limit the use of carbon, in response to the
climate crisis. Governments, however, are not exclusive actors in this scenario: international
donors also play a key role, by managing finances destined to children in need, but also by
acting on debt relief, as shown by the initiative to extend debt service suspension beyond
December 2021 and to middle countries. With Covid-19, the urge to invest in equal education
has increased, as well as the instances of equal distribution of social opportunities, especially
among displaced people. In this regard, it is estimated that migrants represent only 3,4 percent
of the global population, but their contribution to global GDP was nearly 10 per cent by 2015.
Therefore, UNICEF aims at abolishing any barrier that stands between the youth, both local
and migrant, and such opportunities, encouraging governments to consider measures such as
abolishing school fees, establishing paid traineeships, adopting digital solutions to warrant
education of displaced and migrant children. Information on education and employment
opportunities should also be provided to young people through channels they are familiar
with, such as social apps.

The second point on the agenda is dedicated to ending the pandemic, and dealing with its
effects on children’s health and nutrition. As the virus threatens the global community,
spreading and mutating, the most effective way to stop it would be to support equal access to
vaccines to the entire world population. Low-income countries are less likely to receive such
support at this moment. Moreover, the lack of equitable access to vaccines would imply a
cost of $ 9,2 trillion worldwide. Consequently, a global coalition, ACT Accelerator, was
founded, with COVAX as its pillar, aiming to accelerate the development and distribution of
vaccines globally. The more economic support such organizations receive by aid donors, the
sooner and the better the pandemic crisis will be handled. Another significant form of support

8
to COVAX is represented by the donations of doses of vaccines considered in excess by
countries which have enough vaccines to cover their entire adult population, but governments
can also take other measures to safeguard their citizens, especially the young ones: the
priority within the vaccination campaign should be given to the most vulnerable people,
especially migrants and displaced people, but also to frontline health workers. Meanwhile,
a constant awareness campaign about the virus, the importance of social distancing and
hygiene measures are proven to make a difference in the fight against Covid. Moreover, low-
income countries’ health systems need to be supported, especially among communities with
children who are not covered by basic vaccines every year. Such measures should also be
taken against other preventable diseases, which have been estimated to cause 7,4 million of
deaths among young people in 2019, most of them in the poorer countries
COVID-19, however, has also worsened the already severe nutrition crisis, making nutrient
food even less available. To distribute nutritious food, governments have to incentivize its
production, as well as make it more affordable; governments also must condemn the
dangerous marketing of junk food and drink: such marketing, together with the cheap costs
associated with unhealthy food, helps its distribution in cities as well as in rural areas. It is
also necessary to teach community workers to recognize early signs of waste, but also to
wage treatments such as therapeutic foods. All these initiatives need financial support, which
needs to be doubled by development and financial donors.

Education and mental health are the focus of the third point on UNICEF agenda. Although
Covid has certainly aggravated the learning crisis experienced in the past years, appropriate
measures need to be taken to end such crisis once and for all. Firstly, any attack on schools
must be ceased, while long-terms plans need to be approved by Member States, such as the
Safe School Declaration, an inter-governmental political commitment to protect students,
teachers, schools, and universities from the worst effects of armed conflict
(protectingeducation.org).,while school reopening must be supported. Moreover, in order to
facilitate online learning, access to internet should be guaranteed to children and young
people worldwide by 2030; such an operation requires the decrease of the cost of digital
devices, as well as the search by Mobile Network Operators for solutions to favor the access
to digital learning everywhere. Regarding the youngest’s mental health, the priority should
be given to marginalized young people, whose mental health is more easily threatened due
to the arduous living conditions to which they are exposed. Paradoxically, however, such
people are also those who tend to be less protected and supported; therefore, governments
should promote local services to help not only children, but also families and caregivers;
schools play significative role as well, as environments (both real and virtual) in which young

9
people have to interact safely. Last but not least, mental health issues have to be faced also
by fostering a better understanding of it, through the work of national and local services.

Last point on UNICEF’s agenda is a new approach to tackling crisis, including new ways
of ending famines, protecting children from climate change and reimagining disaster
spending. The Committee believes that there is the need a global plan of action and
accountability to consign famine to history once and for all, through investing in longer-term,
preventative, multipronged
approaches but ultimately, the need of recognizing famines for what they are: political crises
that require political solutions. UNICEF recommends that, in order to protect children from
the already changing climate, governments should lay out a roadmap that will cut emissions
to ‘Net Zero’ by 2050, that massive and urgent increasing investments in climate adaptation
are adopted in key social services for children including critical services in WASH, health,
and food systems, that children’s rights and needs are consulted and heard in decision-making
that directly affects them. Moreover, the Committee supports the idea that a new broad re-
thinking of how we approach
humanitarian financing is needed to sustain these changes.

10