By Julia Hönnecke
Because of legal requirements regarding fire exits at the EuroMUN location MECC, the UNHCR committee had to re-organize the seating order which led to some confusion and time-delaying. However, after the organizational questions were covered, the delegate of Myanmar (who had been forgotten about before) found his seat, and the chairs had figured out who has a Dutch residency to show the other delegates more of the Dutch life style, the introduction round started. The introduction included next to general facts a fun-fact of each delegate in which the two chairs had some extraordinary ones: while one chair can burp for 15 seconds straight the other one ate a lamp from head to tail. This can only lead to a good conference, right?
The first day ended with an inspiring quote of the delegate of Yemen who said in Arabic: “if you started a job, do it all the way, finish your job” addressing the upcoming discussion over whether to expand the 1951 Convention, which gave a general definition of refugees, to adapt to new issues and different kind of refugees seen in the 21st century.