After Peace Memorial Ceremony in Hiroshima centre and spending two days discovering the city and its history it was time for us to start workshops and preparation of roleplay. Before we arrived to Japan we were suppose to read articles connected with women’s rights, human rights and gender and then discuss about these issues in the workshops.

International groups made the discussion very interesting and made us realize how differently gender and women’s rights are understood in different countries and cultures. Daily life examples the participants shared with each other also showed the great variety of problems, concerns and developments in different countries.

UN roleplay, which we will have in our last day in Hiroshima, took also great start when people started to create alliances to make sure their interests would be secured in the roleplay. Country groups, separated to different classrooms, were walking around the building to meet other countries’ representatives, negotiating the terms of draft resolution and pointing out why some changes should be made to the draft. In the end of day people had made deals between countries, broke some previous cooperation and made compromises to make sure their priorities in international field would be secured by support of other states.

Although it feels that we just started the seminar, there will be only two days left in Hiroshima. During those days roleplay preparation, together with last workshop and guest lecture, will take all our time.

Sanni