Greenside High School wishes to congratulate their UN Debaters who brought home bronze and silver awards at the South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA) Johannesburg Model United Nations Committees event at Wits on 14 September.
Accompanied by teachers, the Greenside delegates represented Kenya in the Sustainable Development Goals summit for 2019 discussing accelerating the implementation of the 2030 agenda for sustainable development. They also represented the Dominican Republic in the Security Council debate on climate change as well as Bhutan in a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) committee focusing on indigenous languages.
Top debaters Bibi Faatimah Moosa, Zaheer Sooliman and Terique Carim won bronze in the Security Council debate, while Wasim Waja won silver in the best speaker category as part of the indigenous languages committee.
Head of English and United Nations debating at Greenside High, Janet Unterslak also commended learners Aatikah Sheikh, Bibi Faatimah Moosa, Fatima Matwadia, Terique Carim and Zaheer Sooliman for being selected to be part of the youth policy committee gender working group. She described this as a special opportunity to provide youth input into the new draft Gender-Based Violence National Strategic Framework.
“A representative of Oxfam South Africa will provide an overview of the framework, and the Youth@SAIIA team will work with the new members to create a youth statement to submit to the government. This is a chance to get our voices heard,” said Unterslak.
She explained that debating of any kind takes hours of dedication and commitment in preparation, reading, research and practising.
“Debaters are intelligent, well-informed, exciting people to be around who always have an interesting opinion on any topic and who can justify and support their point of view.
“I commend all our debaters and congratulate them on a wonderful year – our previous delegations having won in each debate in which they participated, and our debaters have been invited to be part of national and provincial task teams whose documents have been given to ambassadors of foreign countries and our own government,” said Unterslak, expressing amazement at what the Greenside debaters have achieved.
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