On Key Terms, Themes, Ideas

Hello again delegates!

Here's a little review on some key terms, themes, and ideas from the synopsis that we will touch upon, either in your research papers or in March. For further emphasis, read our topic synopsis (which is linked on the BMUN website) and do your own personal research!

Topic A

• Trauma: Actual, possible, and/or threatened death, serious injury, or sexual violence.
• Exposure to trauma, either directly or indirectly, is a necessary condition for the diagnosis of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
• PTSD Symptoms: Positive symptoms (distressing nightmares, hyper-vigilance, intrusive thoughts of reliving traumatic events) and negative symptoms (reduced interest in activities, lowered energy, memory loss, self isolation).
• PTSD rates and symptoms are gender, culture, and geologically specific.
• An estimated 345 million adult survivors of war suffered from PTSD or had experienced trauma related depression due to their war experiences.
• Rehabilitation: A process aimed at enabling disabled persons to reach and maintain their optimal functional levels to provide higher independence.
• Rehabilitation is often focused on physical health, with little funding or policies to aid in mental health rehabilitation.
• The global median investment into government mental health programs is less than 2%. Richer, European countries have better resources for mental health rehabilitation than poorer countries.
• Short term vs. Long term Solutions:
• Short term solutions like financial aid, government intervention in conflict, etc. are helpful in the moment but do not solve the systematic issue of conflict-induced trauma.
• Long term solutions like community rehabilitation, systemic change of authority, etc. create stability that would laster longer, making them more robust and pivotal solutions to seek (ex. TSTR).
• UN Involvement:
• WHO Mental Health Global Action Programme (mhGAP): Goal of increasing government awareness/response to mental health, enhancing mental health prevention, establishing treatment/rehabilitation services, reducing discrimination.
• Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration: A resolution to commit heads of states to mitigating migrant-related trauma.
• Other Actors:
• Refugee Trauma Initiative (RTI): "Identity based, trauma informed"; Matches refugees with therapists and social workers of same languages/cultures/shared experiences to better treat trauma survivors. Immediate and long term support based in Greece.
• Syria Bright Future: Mental health treatment and services to refugees based in Jordan and Turkey, with an added emphasis on children's needs. Helps coordinate resources to the areas and individuals that need them most.
• International Medical Corps: One of the largest comprehensive humanitarian relief organizations in the world, acting on the ground to provide emergency medical and related services to those in conflict. Has an international base, helping raise and coordination funds for mental health rehabilitation.

Topic B

• Food Sovereignty (the right of peoples to define their own food and agriculture) must be met with food security, availability, access, and democratic participation.
• Food Security: When all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food that meets dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.
• Food availability: The availability of sufficient quantities of food of appropriate quality, supplied through domestic production/imports, including food aid.
• Food access: Access by individuals to adequate resources for acquiring appropriate foods for a nutritious diet.
• Levels of Food Emergency:
• Minimal/None: HH group is able to meet essential food/non-food needs without unsustainable or atypical strategies, including humanitarian aid reliance.
• Stressed: With humanitarian assistance, HH group has minimally adequate food consumption but is able to afford some non-food items without irreversible coping strategies.
• Crisis: HH group has food consumption gaps with high/higher than usually acute malnutrition or HH group is marginally able to meet minimum food requirements with accelerated depletion of assets that lead to food consumption gaps.
• Emergency: With humanitarian aid, HH group has large food consumption gaps, high levels of acute malnutrition, and mortality or HH group has extreme loss of livelihood assets that will lead to large food consumption gaps.
• Catastrophe/Famine: With humanitarian assistance, HH group has extreme lack of food and/or basic needs with full employment of coping strategies. Starvation, death, and destitution are evident.
• Impacts of Food Insecurity: Feelings of guilt/anxiety/isolation, hunger, malnutrition, improper physical and cognitive growth, depression, disordered eating habits
• Note that it has deep psychological impacts as well as physical--both are key to understanding rehabilitation after food insecurity
• Main regions impacted by Food Insecurity: Countries impacted by conflict/natural disasters (Ex. Yemen, Syria, Somalia), Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, South Asia
• These regions also have low levels of income, education, literacy, and social capital.
• Wealthier countries have significantly lower levels, signaling a strong relationship between poverty and food insecurity.
• When presenting a solution for food insecurity, it can also address all of the systematic issues that are related to create a long-term solution.
• UN Involvement (Note: UN Effectiveness is heavily debated): 
• World Food Programme (WFP): Leader in the second Sustainable Development Goal to end hunger worldwide by 2030, focusing on resource allocation/relief. Aids survivors of war, natural disaster, and emergency to provide emergency food assistance.
• Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO): Targets long-term sustainability for food-related industries, aiming at policy and legislation to improve national food security as well as culturally-sensitive approaches to sustainable food cultivation.
• World Bank: Supplies developed nations with loans to complete projects, wishing to address the agrarian sector through increasing wages and GDP of the country.

These terms should help in your writing/editing of papers, either in building a strong background or having specific, feasible solutions. Once again, please don't be afraid to reach out to us for anything (we don't bite). See y'all this March!! :3c

xoxo, Amber

57th Session of the Commission for Social Development