This morning, members of the World Tourism Organisation entered formal debate regarding voluntourism. Their key question is as follows:
How can we balance voluntourists’ personal need for gratification with maximising the benefits of voluntourism and minimising its negative implications incurred to countries so as to create an environment which promotes socio-economic development and respects the socio-cultural authenticity of host communities?
Officially, ‘voluntourism’ is defined as a form of tourism in which the tourists primarily participates in voluntary work as their form of sight-seeing. The term ‘voluntourist’ refers to those who participate in voluntourism.
Many countries rely on voluntourism as a source of humanitarian and development aid. However, as the key question notes, there have been negative implications to voluntourism that challenge its beneficiality, both to recipient local communities and foreign voluntourists.
The opening speeches in the council session today commenced without any prominent issue appearing for countries to focus on, which in itself, was an issue.
The issue of voluntourism is a topic with many nuances and interlaced aftereffects. Harmful impacts on local communities are difficult to resolve without having to address a different issue, and the already-established worldwide network of programs and organisations make voluntourism a complex issue to unravel.
Opening speeches were thus widely variant, with no clear common issue coming to light. Delegates’ speeches encompassed many of the raised concerns of voluntourism, but few were impactful and moved the debate forward.
Notably, the delegate of Ghana mentioned a suspended idea to build a wall around itself as the United States had planned to do. The delegate of Mongolia also announced that voluntourism was not personally helpful to them, and planned on eliminating it entirely. The delegate acknowledged that it was, however, beneficial to other countries.
The delegate of Israel attempted to narrow down and unify the scope of debate with a motion for an unmoderated caucus, but the motion failed. The delegate of Ghana’s motion for a moderated caucus was passed, with the topic set of setting a clear definition for what counted as ‘corruption’.
The caucus went much like the opening speeches had, with each country’s delegate identifying issues and suggesting solutions with no clear link to one another.
The delegate of Israel spoke second. She was rightfully frustrated, speaking that the UN had already established ‘corruption’ to have no set definition, and asserted that the council had to agree on a specific subtopic before they could make progress.
The delegate of Israel once again motioned for an unmoderated caucus, which proved to be fruitful. The delegate of Israel iterated to her fellow delegates that she agreed that they had to agree on a definition for ‘corruption’, but that that discussion did not warrant a full moderated caucus.
The council then entered an involved discussion, and by the end of the caucus, came up with a framework for cooperation.
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