Our NSA for this simulation was very helpful and left us with some positive feedback when the game was finished. The positive points that were made mainly had to do with our focus on getting the EU to communicate. We had trouble at first getting them to respond as we needed to gain back our oil exports for the country so Mr. Muallem (Meaghan) sent out a press release telling them that they had 42 hours to respond or we are going to open oil exportation. We did begin completing a press release on our plan of action for restoring our human rights by giving the citizens a vote in certain matters but ran out of time in the end to complete it.
The only negative feedback was that we started off slow at the beginning of the simulation. It was confusing in the beginning learning how the website worked but once we got everything figured out emails were immediately sent out with regard to our goals statement.
Overall this was an interesting experience and each of the games were very different. It all depends on the leaders of every country and their willingness to communicate. We were pretty lucky in this regard as almost all of the other Countries that we tried to contact, other then the EU, were open to discussion and wanted help that we could provide. It's interesting to see how teenagers are able to think of active solutions to so many of the problems that are happening in the middle east but grown men (and a few women) aren't able to negotiate.
Naomi, you were a great partner to work with on this simulation. Yes it was very hard to get people to respond to our communications which made it difficult to take action and achieve our goals. However, the action forms and press releases that we released worked to our advantage.
ReplyDeleteSyria is currently experiencing several human rights violations, and I hope for the country and the citizens of Syria that they can improve their human rights.
I think it's so much easier for us as teenagers to solve these problems because we don't have hidden agendas and previous promises to a variety of people. For example many people including me think that Benjamin Netanyahu should just stop expanding into the West bank once and for all so negotiations can proceed. There are a variety of reasons that he has not done so but most involve the fact that if he stopped he would anger many people in his government and perhaps lose power. This is an unacceptable reason in my opinion and is a prime example of typical "politics". We did not have such intricate politics to deal with so in some cases it was much easier to "solve" the Middle-East's problems.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you had such an insightful and eyeopening experience with this simulation. I agree that is was interesting. I found it amazing how a munch of teenager/young adults were sometimes able to negotiate and come to a solution that the people whose job it is to do that. Just goes to show that every one can make a different
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