mun class

Position Paper Assignment Model United Nations

Prof. Carolyn Shaw Purpose:

Writing the position paper encourages students to synthesize and summarize their committee research. The brevity of the paper requires concise writing and clear articulation of a country's foreign policy.

Assignment:

Each student will be assigned to a committee on which the team’s country serves in the UN. There will probably be two members per committee who will work together on their research. The committee members will research the country’s position on 2-3 issue areas and prepare a position paper. The position paper is a summary of your country's position on the issues before your committee. In order to write the paper, you will need to conduct extensive research on the specific topics before the committee, as well as on your country's foreign policy perspective.

A position paper should include: 1. State why the topic is important. Who should care about it? Why is it on the UN’s

agenda? Are there potential negative consequences to not addressing the issue?

2. What work has been done already to address this issue? What UN agencies deal with it? You can frame these in terms of an assessment - the agencies are “effective”, “successful”, “overburdened” etc. What conventions, conferences, meetings, etc have been held? What documents have come out of these meetings? Resolutions, treaties, conventions? Frame these in terms of your country's support (or rejection) of these efforts.

3. Link your country to the work that has been done. Have you contributed funds? Sponsored/attended conferences? Signed treaties? Have you taken notable steps domestically to address this issue? (This is less important than 3.)

4. Propose some specific steps to resolve the problem. These should be logically linked to

the statements you have made to question 1. These may not be directly linked to your country’s position, but should not be contradictory to your interests. Focus can be on multilateral steps, or on regional organizations, or on pursuing domestic/national legislation that will address the problem. Try to limit yourself to TWO clear plans of action. “Britain believes there are two key steps to be taken: first, ... second,…”

Grading: Your position papers should be 1 page long (single spaced), presenting the position of our country on each of the topics your committee has been assigned. You should have a separate header and paragraph for each topic. The first drafts will be revised as you gather more information about your topic. It is important to make sure your grammar and spelling are accurate.

First draft - 10 points for papers turned in on time

- 0 points for late papers Final - 15 points for clearly written papers with strong substantive

content and clear country position - 10 points for papers with weak content and/or ambiguous policy position - 7 points for late papers regardless of their merit

Tips on How to Write a Position Paper * Avoid use of “flowery” language. Try to state what you want to say as succinctly and

clearly as possible. Diplomats can be round-about and vague, but position papers should not be.

* Writing in the present tense is better than past perfect. Ex: “Finland supports the UN’s

efforts to ____” NOT “Finland has supported the UN ____” (the exception is when you are actually referring to specific events in the past. “Finland has supported historical peacekeeping efforts by contributing over 2,000 troops throughout the Cold War”).

* Avoid to much use of first person pronouns (I, We). Refer to your position by country

name. “Germany believes...”, “Germany supports...” * Avoid superlatives: greatest, best, most, very, extremely. These tend to sound like

exaggerations. * Frequently used terms: international community, global community, member states,

mechanisms, guidelines, implementation, conventions, treaties, resolutions, conferences, multilateral, bilateral, national.

* Verbs:

affirms endeavors recognizes allocates acknowledges encourages believes hopes recommends urges considers addresses emphasizes advocates

SAMPLE: France GA Second Committee Topic A: Title [written out] This is a serious problem that affects the world [how specifically?]. The UN [or other agencies/organizations] has been active in trying to address this problem in the past by _____________. [identify past resolutions, conventions, meetings, treaties, etc.] France has supported the work that has been done in the past through [ ____ agencies, organizations, international conferences (dates) ]. France has ratified the _____ [treaty, convention]. France has taken steps domestically to address this issue by [ passing specific domestic legislation].

The efforts by the international community to address this problem have been _______ [ineffective, successful, etc.] Despite these efforts, more needs to be done. [Why? What are the weaknesses?] France recommends that the following steps be taken to resolve/address this problem: First ____. Second, ____. [TWO proposals for action are plenty]. Topic B: Title [written out] Same as above.