Qatar Foundation’s Thimun 2018 opens

The seventh annual Thimun Qatar conference opened yesterday at the QatarNational Convention Centre. The three-day event, involving more than1,300 Model United Nation (MUN) local, regional, and internationalstudents, was officially launched with a colourful flag procession.The theme of this year’s conference is ‘Gender Equality and Empowermentfor Women and Girls’, inspired by United Nations Sustainable DevelopmentGoal 5. In line with the theme, the keynote speech was delivered byTrisha Shetty, founder and CEO of SheSays India, a youth-led NGO with afocus on youth and civil society engagement to promote gender equality. A number of embassy representatives also attended the opening ceremony,including Roberto Abdalla, ambassador of Brazil; Eric Chevallier,ambassador of France; and Dr Bahia Tahzib-Lie, ambassador of the Kingdomof the Netherlands who also addressed the audience. During the conference, participants will engage in a simulation of theUnited Nations, taking on roles as diplomats to discuss and debateinternational issues in order to develop solutions to some of thegreatest challenges facing the global community. Thimun Qatar’s regionaloffice was created as a joint project between Qatar Foundation’s QatarAcademy schools and the Thimun Foundation, an affiliation programmedesigned to develop high quality MUN conferences around the world.