In 2010 a group of enthusiastic students of the Gymnasium Haganum school (Haganum) in the Hague, the Netherlands, founded the Haganum Model United Nations, HagaMUN. Their passion for MUN and their interests in subjects such as history, social studies and English resulted in the foundation of the school’s very own Model United Nations conference. In its very first year, HagaMUN had almost 250 participants, and it hasn’t stopped growing. In 2018 HagaMUN reached its record amount of participants at 520, attracting schools from countries such as Poland, Spain and The UAE.

MUN
Model United Nations is a extra curricular activity at our school, in which students with a passion for debate can participate. In MUN, students typically roleplay delegates to the United Nations and simulate UN committees, such as the General Assembly, the Human Rights Council and the Security Council. When representing a country that the HagaMUN staff will assign you to, you are a delegate. Experienced delegates can become Student Officers, the chairs of a committee, that moderate debate and keep order throughout the weekend. Other aspects of MUN include Press Members, who write the HagaMUNdus, the conference’s newspaper, and the Crisis-team, that organises realistic situation of crises in certain committees.

Theme
The theme for our upcoming conference will be “Preventing and reducing the adverse effects of climate change on vulnerable communities”. The conference will be fully engaged and committed to unfolding this year’s theme. This means that you can expect many issues concerning the safety of and human rights threats to marginalised communities, with a special focus on those caused by climate change. Not only will our commitment shine through in our debates, but we will be donating the proceeds of this year’s conference to Dutch organisation ZOA and selling merchandise to support the cause. Donation boxes will also be made available and we will have guest speakers help raise awareness for the theme.

The organisation

Organising a MUN conference requires a various set of skills: patience, determination and the understanding every single aspect of organising such a large conference.
At the very start of each school year, the Secretariat, the school’s four most experienced and ambitious MUN’ers, select a Staff-team made up of experienced and enthusiastic students from the school. All these students voluntarily choose to help organise the conference, as no specific grade or subject is involved in organising the conference.

The school
The students of the Haganum have participated in many different MUN conferences for many years. Every year the Haganum MUN-group goes abroad to visit a MUN-conference, in cities such as Paris, Istanbul and Athens. The teacher that accompanies the group, Mr. Paul Regeer, monitored the MUN programme at our school for more than 10 years, but has since passed the torch to Mr. Tom van der Hulst, our current MUN-Director.

The Gymnasium Haganum is a state grammar school with a very high reputation in the Netherlands. It was founded in 1394 and for many years it has been regarded as one of the top schools in the country by numerous magazines and newspapers. It sets high standards for its students, but always manages to keep a warm and friendly atmosphere throughout the years students spend at our school – a quality the HagaMUN conference is also famous for.
The building is absolutely stunning; dating from the neoclassical era it features many statues (as seen on our homepage) and a number of fresco’s. Some even compare the school to Harry Potter’s Hogwarts, because of the wide marble stairs, the dignified interior and of course the remarkable tower. The classrooms are the opposite of Hogwarts however,  each having a widescreen TV and contemporary interior.