AEV Model United Nations

The Security Council was established in 1945 under the UN Charter as the principal organ responsible for the maintenance of international peace and security. Its five permanent members (P5) — the United States, United Kingdom, France, Russia, and China — hold veto power over substantive resolutions, an arrangement reflecting the post-WWII balance of power that has shaped, and often paralyzed, Council action ever since. Ten elected non-permanent members serve two-year terms and rotate the presidency monthly. In the 2020s, the Council's authority has been tested by overlapping crises in which P5 interests are directly engaged. Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine triggered repeated Russian vetoes; the war in Gaza following the October 7, 2023 attacks has produced contested ceasefire votes shaped by US positions; and Sudan's civil war between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces, which erupted in April 2023, has generated the world's largest displacement crisis while the 2005 Darfur arms embargo (Resolution 1591) remains poorly enforced. Parallel work on cyber norms, advanced through the Open-Ended Working Group on ICTs, has begun to spill into Council attention as attacks on critical infrastructure proliferate. The Council today operates under sustained pressure to reform — over veto restraint, expanded permanent membership, and the use of the General Assembly's "Uniting for Peace" mechanism when the Council deadlocks. Delegates will navigate the tension between the Council's binding Chapter VII authority and the political constraints that increasingly limit its use.

DISEC, the First Committee of the UN General Assembly, was created at the UN's founding to address disarmament, global challenges, and threats to peace affecting the international community. It operates by consensus or simple majority and feeds resolutions into the General Assembly, complementing the Geneva-based Conference on Disarmament and treaty bodies such as the NPT, CCW, and CWC. Unlike the Security Council, DISEC cannot impose binding measures, but it sets normative direction on arms control debates that shape state behavior. The contemporary agenda has shifted decisively toward emerging technologies. Negotiations on Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (LAWS) have continued under the CCW Group of Governmental Experts since 2014, with a growing coalition — led by Austria and many Global South states — pushing for a binding instrument requiring meaningful human control, while major military powers prefer non-binding guidelines. The Outer Space Arms Race has re-intensified following destructive ASAT tests by China (2007), India (2019), and Russia (2021), the proliferation of dual-use satellites, and the long stalemate over a Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space (PAROS) treaty. Cybersecurity norms, advanced through successive GGE and OEWG processes, increasingly intersect with these files as AI, space, and cyber capabilities converge. Delegates will weigh the adequacy of existing frameworks — the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, the CCW, and voluntary cyber norms — against the pace of technological change, and confront the verification problem that underlies every emerging-tech arms control debate.