Research, and gathering information, is probably the most important aspect of your preparations for an MCBMUN conference. The more time you devote to research, and the more research you do the better your standard of debate will become. It is advisable to start researching your issues as soon as briefing papers are posted for it on the site. You should try to keep up to date with current affairs, and keep a look out for your issue, or your country in the news.
You should concentrate on the following four areas during your research:
- Your country's positions on international issues, and towards other countries represented on your committee
- Your issue, and your country's positions towards it
- Current affairs
- The UN System
Country Information
When you research your country it is important to consider the following things about it
- The type of government (eg. capitalist, communist, Islamic)
- Ideologies within the government (eg. political, religious doctrines)
- The state of the economy (Less Economically Developed, or More Economically Developed?)
- Major events in your country's history (when did you gain independence, which wars have you fought, and against whom?)
- Which ethnicities, religions, and ideologies are represented in your country (eg. Ireland, a largely Roman Catholic Christian Country)
- Where is your country? Who are your neighbours? What trading bloc (eg. European Union) are you a part of?
- Which countries are your enemies/allies?
- Where does your country rank in various league tables, eg. GDP, HDI? Which countries are in a similar position?
- How long has your country been in the UN?
- Which International Organizations is your country a member of outside the UN (eg. NATO)?
- Which International Agreements both inside and outside the UN is your country party to (eg. Nuclear non-proliferation, the Kyoto Protocol)
To help answer these questions you can use
- a modern, up to date, printed reference
- an encyclopedia, such as Brittanica or Wikipedia
- find the country's government website (the UK's is http://www.direct.gov.uk)
- use the CIA World Factbook (https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/)
- the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (http://www.fco.gov.uk/en/)
When you use this data you should decide whether your country would agree with it: much of the data is produced by the governments of other countries (USA and the UK).
Researching your Issues
When you research your committee's issues you should consider
- What is the problem? How does it affect your country?
- What has your country done in relation to the problem?
- Does your government fund NGOs or other organizations involved in the issue?
- What aspects are there to the problem?
- What are other countries on your committee's opinion? Who takes your side?
- Do the positions of your allies and neighbours affect your position?
- Can you get statistics or evidence to back-up your position?
- What recent UN actions have there been on this issue? Have they been successful?
- Have there been any International Court of Justice judgements on the issue?
Researching an issue can be difficult, especially if your country doesn't seem to be involved in it. It is, however, still very important that you research ways of solving the problem, and do as much work as possible to find out about your country's involvement in the issue. Some useful sources of information are:
- News sources
- Former resolutions on issues, debated at the UN (you can find these at http://unbisnet.un.org/
- The websites of UN bodies, eg. Health Committee issues should use the World Health Organization website
The UN System
The United Nations, which MCBMUN emulates, is an extremely large organization, with a wide scope of responsibilities. As a result, it has a complex organizational hierarchy. It is important that you understand the bases of this in order to debate effectively. Understanding what the UN can and cannot do is important, as making an unobtainable or unworkable proposition can be embarrassing, and may waste valuable time during a debate.
- Read the UN Charter or a summary of it, and understand the basic functioning of the UN
- Read the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which governs what affects a resolution cannot have on the population of a country
- Your committee page will have details about the functioning of the committee
- Which countries sit on your committee? The security council only has 15 members, for example.
- The UN Website has details about its organization, and provides a printable chart
At MCBMUN the majority of committees are General Assembly sub-committees, but the Security Council and Historical Committee are not, and as a result have different rules. One important consideration is that GA committees cannot declare war, and the operative clause demands may not be used in resolutions.