Principal’s Account of the BHS MUN Conference

By David Gray

In the morning of Saturday, 28 May, I attended the inauguration of the 2022 BHSMUN conference which was attended by 100 delegates. The event was introduced by BHSMUN Secretary General, Stephanie Zoghby, who introduced me and, following my address, I welcomed and gave an introduction to our guest speaker who was Dr. Antonios Abu Kasm, a distinguished lawyer on the international stage who is lead Defence Counsel in the Hague, Holland, for the Special Tribunal for Lebanon which looks into the assassination of political leaders connected to the assassination of former Prime Minister of Lebanon, Rafik Hariri. He has been a barrister for 18 years and works on matters like international litigation, terrorism, money laundering and United Nations and European Union human rights mechanisms and international arbitration. He has worked closely with the UN and is also the author of several legal books including ‘the role of the constitutional judiciary in the establishment of the rule of law’. His speech was excellent and helped inform delegates much more fully and from first hand experience of the actual work of the United Nations and of its limitations.  He answered quite a number of questions too which pertained to the effectiveness or otherwise of the United Nations today, especially in the light of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. He got the morning off to a great start and it was interesting that he also told me that he was familiar with Brummana High School from Summer School in 1994 which he had attended in order to improve his knowledge of the English Language. He hopes to become more closely associated with BHS in future and would like to return on other occasions.

The conference then got underway and I am indebted to Joey Kdeissy who is the Programme Director of BHSMUN for all the hard work she put in to make it happen effectively. I am also grateful to the industrial and administrative staff who helped in the background to set everything up and ensured that the conference could take place across several venues, including the Meeting House, Khoury Hall and Dobbing Hall. Brummana looked at its best and it is thanks to them that that was the case. The students were impressive, conducted themselves well, looked smart and managed the process with great confidence.

The event was a great success and is one of the real strengths of Brummana which celebrates free speech, freedom of thought, respect for others and tolerance of others’ faiths and opinions, ideal for the cause of the UN which is there to try to preserve world peace and to resolve global conflicts.