The Ultimate MUN Delegate Guide
The Ultimate MUN Delegate Guide
Preface
Dear Delegate,
I have created this research guide to facilitate your preparation for your
conferences. The guide contains questions for you to try to answer in order
to get to know your country, its policy, and the topic better. I hope that it
will be a useful tool for you to write your position paper and resolution, or to
simply make you feel more prepared and confident when you arrive at your
conference.
You don’t have to answer every question and exercise that is in this guide,
and some of them might not be applicable to your committee. I recommend
that you first read over the entire guide, decide which questions are most
important for you to answer, and then begin your research. This document
is simply intended to make your preparation easier, not to overwhelm you. I
have tried to compile the most useful tasks and questions into one
document so that you have something to refer back to when you are
researching. I can guarantee you that if you spend some time using this
guide, you will be prepared for the debates in your committee.
Happy Research!
Bianka Bodon
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Generalities
● What are three things that your country is most famous for?
● What is its history? List three historical events that are very important.
● Has it participated in war in the past 150 years? Is it currently at war?
● Briefly research your country policy on the following topics, paying
particular attention to the ones that relate to your topic:
○ Climate change, energy (fossil, renewable, and nuclear)
○ Education, equality in education, women’s education
○ Healthcare, social welfare, and pandemics
○ Nuclear and other weapons
○ Social inequality and empowering the poor
○ Political extremism and terrorism
○ Human rights, refugees, women’s rights
○ Trade regulations, protectionism, illegal trade
○ Optional: the dark web, cryptocurrencies
● Find two or three online newspapers from your country, and start following
them. Make a habit of checking them a few times a week. Try to choose a
diverse range of publications, like one governmental one and one opposition
one. It is even better if the publication focuses specifically on your topic.
Economy
● On a spectrum between capitalism and communism, where does your
country stand? (Hint: economic freedom index)
● What are the biggest exports and imports?
● Who are your biggest trading partners? (Hint: big trade partners are
generally also allies)
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Government
● What is the system of government? Liberal or illiberal democracy,
dictatorship, monarchy, military rule, anarchy, theocracy, etc.
● What are the most influential political bodies? Upper and lower house,
cabinet, ministries and departments, supreme court, etc.
● Who are the biggest parties? What are their policies?
● Who are the ruling party, the head of state, and the head of government at
the moment? Who was it before?
● How prevalent is corruption and inefficiency?
● How fair are the elections, if there are any?
● Is your government openly religious? How much?
Geography
● How large is your country?
● What natural resources does it have? Which ones does it lack?
● What is the general geography of your country? Temperature, landscapes,
waters, etc.
● What seas and oceans does it have access to? Do these hold any economic or
political significance?
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debate. When this is the case, you don’t have to reflect the reality of
the UN. Your chairs will understand that your country isn’t active in
the topic, but you still absolutely should be. Don’t forget: you can still
write resolutions on topics that your country isn’t that big on. Your
country’s neutrality might even help you, because you will be able to
craft a resolution that adheres to your country policy while satisfying
other countries’ needs as well!
○ You can use your research from Step 1 to try to predict how your
country would address the topic, even if it hasn’t done so. A good way
to look at this is to
■ Look at how it has addressed similar topics (for example: if
your country favors legalizing light drugs, it is also likely to be
in favor of other similar policy questions)
■ Look at who your country is allied with or is similar to. There
are many countries who are “policy twins” and essentially
have the same policies on everything, like Muslim countries,
the Visegrad 4 countries, liberal western nations, etc.
● What has your country done to address the issue? Draw a timeline of your
country’s actions related to the issue. Researching this question is incredibly
important because many of your speeches will need you to present what you
have already done. You can share what has worked and what has not with
fellow delegates in order to be able to craft policy suggestions that will
actually work.
● How has your country’s stance changed on the issue?
● What are key actors in your country who are involved in the issue? Think
about government agencies, NGOs, individuals, movements, companies, etc.
Go to their websites and articles about them to find out what they have done
and what they stand for.
● What are the different blocs within your country and what are their stances
on the issue?
● Is your country well equipped to address the issue? What would you need in
order to be able to better address it?
● How radical is your country? How important does it find the issue? If your
country is very radical, think about how you will be able to present your
ideas and have others support it while still sticking to your country policy.
Your resolutions don’t have to be as radical as your country is, especially if
that means that no one will vote for it.
● If your conference has a no electronics policy (most do), then make sure that
you respect it. If this is the case, you won’t be able to research during the
committee sessions, but you can still research after waking up, during lunch
breaks, the evening, and at night. From personal experience, you won’t have
much time to do this, and the best time to research is at night.
Your rivals
● After your very first committee session, you will start to have a rough idea of
who the most active delegates are and who your biggest rivals are going to
be. These are the countries you want to focus on researching.
● If you can already sense a rivalry forming between you and a country, start
digging up dirt on them. If you know what their biggest attacks on you are,
find ways to rebut or deny their claims.
● Obviously, you don’t want to be too harsh on other countries, but you are
likely to get in situations where you have a very strong rivalry with someone.
It is best to have a toolbox of arguments that you can use against them, and
also know what their arguments are going to be, and be able to rebut them.
Make sure that you don’t reuse any of your arguments during the conference
though, unless absolutely necessary.
Miscellaneous
● If you didn’t understand something that happened during the committee
sessions, write it down and Google it later.
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● Distributing your research over a span of months rather than days can make
you feel less overwhelmed. It will also drastically improve your time
management skills.