Students gather for a picture at a selfie booth, outside their Model UN General Assembly in downtown Beirut's UNESCWA building. Feb. 24, 2024. (Credit: João Sousa/L'Orient Today)
BEIRUT — “Laughing is out of order!”
The conference room full of high school students, dressed in their best business attire, quiets down, following the orders of their mock UN committee vice president — herself a fellow student. She wants them to stick to the subject on hand: US economic sanctions.
North Korea, a bespectacled girl in a purple blouse, has apparently submitted the discussion topic on today’s docket: “investigating the efficacy of US-implemented sanctions in dealing with regional conflicts.”
One girl, Syria, stands up to rip apart a resolution under debate, deeming it “preposterous!”
Latvia, perhaps more diplomatically, suggests that one clause “should be stricken out because it doesn’t solve any matters.”
Palestine lodges a formal request to go to the bathroom.
Outside the walls of last weekend’s mock UN sessions at the (real-life) UNESCWA headquarters in downtown Beirut, a war (also real) is raging in southern Lebanon and further afield in Gaza, threatening the regional fabric the kids in here will soon face as adults.
A Model UN ECOSOC meeting at Beirut's UNESCWA building. Feb. 24, 2024. (Credit: João Sousa/L'Orient Today)
A Model UN ECOSOC meeting at Beirut's UNESCWA building. Feb. 24, 2024. (Credit: João Sousa/L'Orient Today)
But for today, the teens are simply going through a practice run. Inside their Model UN conference, organized by Beirut’s private, top-dollar American Community School (ACS), the majority of the participants are the children of Lebanese (and international) elite. They are here to practice solving the global drug trafficking trade, tackling AI and reforming the abusive kafala guest worker system. There’s even a mock ICJ genocide case, centered on the war in Ukraine.
Their Model UN decisions this weekend might provide hints at what’s to come for Lebanon’s “Gen Z” generation of high achievers, born from the late 1990s through about 2010.
All but one of the Model UN kids L’Orient Today spoke with said they’re planning to get their university degrees outside of Lebanon, and start their careers abroad, too.
Twelfth grader Lea Al Hage, head of press for the event, says she is waiting to hear back from the universities she applied to — all of which are in the Boston and New York City areas.
A poster at a Model UN conference in downtown Beirut organized by the American Community School (ACS). Feb. 24, 2024. (Credit: João Sousa/L'Orient Today)
Twelfth grader Lea Al Hage, head of press for a Model UN conference in downtown Beirut organized by the American Community School (ACS). Feb. 24, 2024. (Credit: João Sousa/L'Orient Today)
A Model UN General Assembly in downtown Beirut organized by the American Community School (ACS). Feb. 24, 2024. (Credit: João Sousa/L'Orient Today)
“I feel like I’m going to begin my career in the US but I do want to come back here and maybe work here in the future,” she says.
Andy Economakis, 14, is too young to apply for university yet but says he wants to study and pursue his career (hopefully one in finance) in the US, “preferably east coast.”
According to Head of School Tom Cangiano, himself from the US, two-thirds of ACS’ roughly 1,000 students are Lebanese passport holders, including dual citizens. Many of them are from “upper socioeconomic groups” due to the school’s high tuition and go on to study economy, finance and business — though some go into arts and design as well (including former student Keanu Reeves).
A map display in the school hallway outside of Cangiano’s office shows where in the world the alumni end up — the highest number, 2,229, are in the Middle East, while the US and Canada are in second place at 2,189 alumni.
There’s increasingly little to keep the upcoming graduates at home in Lebanon — the past four years have seen the country nosedive into an economic crisis, the Beirut port explode and the prospect of yet another all-out war with Israel grow. Skilled, educated professionals with the means to leave have moved abroad in droves.
Ninth grader Yuser al-Dabbagh attends a Model UN conference in downtown Beirut organized by the American Community School (ACS). Feb. 24, 2024. (Credit: João Sousa/L'Orient Today)
Students attend a Model UN General Assembly in downtown Beirut organized by the American Community School (ACS). Feb. 24, 2024. (Credit: João Sousa/L'Orient Today)
Fifteen-year-old Jamal Jamal attends a Model UN conference in downtown Beirut organized by the American Community School (ACS). Feb. 24, 2024. (Credit: João Sousa/L'Orient Today)
The result: nearly two-thirds of Lebanon’s 18-to-29-year-olds say they want to emigrate, according to a 2020-2022 study by Arab Barometer.
Ruqayya Mansour, the girl who played the role of Syria ripping up the UN resolution last weekend, hopes to end up in Florida after graduating, as she has relatives in the Tampa area. Still, she’s only 16 and in 11th grade, so she hasn’t applied to university yet. She hopes to study in the US, work in human resources and avoid making it into an infamous “Florida Woman” news headline.
What drew a 16-year-old girl with a love for fantasy novels to a career in, of all things, human resources? “I like being a leader,” Mansour says.
Meanwhile, kids whose families can’t afford private school tuition are stuck with diminishing options. Lebanese cabinet approved just one-third of the Education Ministry’s total budget request for the 2023-2024 school year, which began weeks behind schedule, sacrificing precious learning time. Most of Lebanon’s students are now one to two years “behind their grade level,” Human Rights Watch found in 2023. Others are simply out of school altogether in recent months, driven by escalating Israeli airstrikes from their homes and classrooms in southern Lebanon.
Once those children do manage to graduate, they’re facing a domestic job market with 29.6 percent unemployment, according to the latest count published by the government’s Central Administration of Statistics. Should they work in the public sector, the military or in informal, manual labor, they’ll make their income in the now-decimated Lebanese lira, which has lost more than 98 percent of its value since the economic crisis began in 2019.
Sixteen-year-old ACS student Ruqayya Mansour poses at an ACS lounge and cafeteria area on Feb. 29, 2024. (Credit: João Sousa/L'Orient Today)
Sixteen-year-old ACS student Ruqayya Mansour poses at an ACS lounge and cafeteria area on Feb. 29, 2024. (Credit: João Sousa/L'Orient Today)
The Model UN kids say they are aware of these problems.
Asked what Lebanon’s biggest challenge is today, ninth-grade future architect Yuser al-Dabbagh doesn’t hesitate: “Probably the economy struggle.”
Hage, the media manager: “The financial crisis, the issue with the banks.”
And Economakis, the future investment banker: “The economy.”
Valeria Bcassini, who represents China in the mock General Assembly and who was only nine years old when the economic crisis began, says the biggest problem is the “lack of freedom of speech.”
“What happens in Lebanon is everyone takes sides, everyone does not listen to each other,” 15-year-old Jamal Jamal chimes in. “That’s a really bad thing that’s happening in Lebanon.”
Dabbagh adds, understandably, that she’s not sure how she’d solve the country’s crises — economic and otherwise.
“Same,” responds L’Orient Today’s Model UN and Gen Z correspondent, who has just finished researching data on joblessness and brain drain in Lebanon for this very article. “Same.”
