MUNIST 2025 Opening Ceremony: Addressing global challenges through collaboration and innovation
For the very first time at the International School of Toulouse, delegates, students, and teachers have gathered for the MUNIST conference of 2025. The theme, “Addressing Global Challenges Through Collaboration and Innovation”, gives room for delegates to debate a wide range of topics; including, but not limited to, technological and healthcare-related debates, conflict escalations, and issues related to human rights.
At 9:00, the opening ceremony began, commencing with a warm welcome from our principal at IST, Rachel Leonard. Speaking to a full auditorium, the 100 delegates received a warm welcome. 8 schools, 6 committees, 3 days. What was once a small weekly club 2 years back had grown to be a full-fledged, successful conference. The MUNIST 2025 theme was highlighted alongside its relevance to us at IST and how it fits into our ethos at IST of respect, responsibility, courage, and integrity. These are all key traits carried by each delegate here with us, fighting to understand conflict resolution and debate of very grim modern-day issues.
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After voicing her pride in the staff and MUNIST Executive team for making this conference possible, the delegates were met by the IST choir. These primary school children sang the school song to the crowd, pumping the cold morning with
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​energy and fueling the delegates with passion for the upcoming days. Mr. Tarr, an entrepreneur and history teacher at IST, was next to join the podium with a moving speech on the progression of innovations alongside its good and bad. While it has empowered communities by strengthening economies and improving global cooperation alongside advancing agricultural tools, digital communication, and modern medicine, he underlined the dire consequences it has also had on the communities. The lack of ethics and foresight in the past has caused innovative ideas to take massive blows on environmental pollution, labour exploitation, and mass amounts of mechanized warfare. His heavy words, comparing innovation to a flaming
torch quoted, “On one hand, it can illuminate a path. On the other, it can also burn everything around it.”. This leaves the questions lingering in the delegates’ minds: ‘How much innovation is actually good? Is it balanced? Or does it provide more harm than it benefits?’
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Followed by this touching and reflective speech, the delegates and other audience members were met by the special guests speaking at MUNIST: Thomas Pesquet, French aerospace engineer and European Space Agency astronaut, along with the head of Airbus International, Wouter Van Wersch. While Pesquet highlighted the constant collaboration and innovation needed in space in order to troubleshoot problems and keep learning through research, Van Wersch emphasised the importance of global collaboration, and how it is a key mission for us to bring the world together. In MUNIST 2025, we are bringing communities together from around the nation and Europe to solve deep-rooted global issues that can occur through innovating as a team. ​
At last, the opening ceremony came to an end with the anticipated speech from our Secretary General, Edgar Leonard. Recalling the memories of his first MUN conference, he encouraged the delegates by emphasizing the indifference on whether this is your first conference or your fifth, and the true importance lay in enjoying the experience and leaving enlightened and with newfound confidence. The future lies in the hands of these very delegates, and the passion and drive they contain to shift our globe into a positive direction is truly inspiring and an act worth commemorating. ​
And with those final words, the MUNIST 2025 Conference had officially begun.
By: Andrew Long, Niharika Vadakoot
MUNIST Press​
Photographs by Andrés Exposito Ramos
MUNIST Media