Model United Nations Club of Cerritos participated in a mock Security Council, discussing the topic of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and its threat to global peace and security.

The mock council was held Tuesday, Dec. 8 in the Cerritos College teleconference center.

ISIL has been a topic of discussion for quite sometime now, due to the recruitment of western civilians through social media, the terrorizing of surrounding ethnic and religious groups and terrorist attacks such as the recent ones in Paris and San Bernardino.

The Security Council is supposed to mirror that of the United Nations Security Council, which has the responsibility of maintaining international peace and security.

The goal of the summit was to discuss different strategies to help promote world security and eradicate threat of ISIL.

Club Advisor Dr. Sunday Obazuaye had hopes that the students would learn the how countries work together in order to maintain peace and security.

“The goal is for students to learn the inner working of the security council. Through diplomacy and strategizing they can come to understands that will begin to help the spread peace instead of radicalization, Obazuaye said.

There were a total of seven countries represented: Russia, Jordan, Venezuela, France, United States, New Zealand and Lithuania.

Each country had their own ideas and strategies on how to best deal with terror threats and contain radicalization amongst civilians.

Each debated their points that include focus on social media recruitment, stronger border control and eliminated resources within and outside of ISIL.

The debating went on for about an hour, ending in a vote on two different sanctions.

Both sanctions failed and a decision was not met as there was no majority rule and the decision was split.

“This is something not only happens here in mock trial, but in an actual security meeting. Because of the division between eastern and western ideologies it make decisions like this very difficult to meet,” Co-Chair Jerry Reynosa said.

A point made by the representative of France was that in order to successfully eradicate radical groups around the world the east and west need to come to a common ground in order achieve peace.

Some believe that military force is a must when handling ISIS, while others believe that focusing on intelligence gathering and resource cut off is the most important.

Dr. Obazuaye ended the conference with a quote by Thomas Jefferson, “‘Eternal vigilance is the price for liberty.’”