International School Hilversum - Model United Nations

The First Committee of the UN General Assembly, known as DISEC, was established at the founding of the UN in 1945 to address threats to international peace through disarmament, arms control, and the regulation of military technologies. Throughout the Cold War, its agenda was shaped by nuclear competition between the United States and the Soviet Union, producing landmark instruments such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (1968), the Biological Weapons Convention (1972), and later the Chemical Weapons Convention (1993). Since the 1990s its scope has broadened to include small arms, landmines, cluster munitions, and increasingly the militarization of emerging technologies. Today DISEC's agenda is dominated by the rapid weaponization of artificial intelligence, cyberspace, and outer space. Negotiations on Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (LAWS) under the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons have intensified since the 2023 Group of Governmental Experts report, with a coalition of states pushing for a binding treaty requiring 'meaningful human control,' while major military powers prefer non-binding principles. In parallel, anti-satellite (ASAT) tests by the United States, Russia, China, and India, combined with stalled negotiations on the Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space (PAROS), have raised alarm about the adequacy of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. DISEC's central challenge is that its consensus-based working culture sits uneasily with the speed of technological change and the deepening rift between Western states, Russia, and the Global South over how to regulate dual-use technologies.

The Sixth Committee is the primary forum of the UN General Assembly for the consideration of legal questions. Established in 1945, it works closely with the International Law Commission (ILC) to codify and progressively develop international law. Its historic outputs include the foundational texts on diplomatic relations, the law of treaties, state responsibility, and the establishment of the International Criminal Court. Unlike political bodies, GA6 operates through technical legal negotiation, with resolutions often paving the way for multilateral conventions. In recent years GA6's docket has been shaped by debates over universal jurisdiction, immunity of state officials from foreign criminal jurisdiction, measures to eliminate international terrorism, and the long-running effort to draft a Convention on Crimes Against Humanity based on the ILC's 2019 draft articles. The committee has also been seized of emerging questions on the rule of law at national and international levels, sea-level rise in relation to international law, and the legal implications of new technologies, including cyber operations and AI. The core tension in GA6 today is between states pressing for stronger codified protections — particularly Global South and small-island states facing existential threats — and major powers wary of new obligations that could constrain sovereignty or expose officials to foreign prosecution. The success of negotiations depends on bridging civil-law and common-law traditions while accommodating non-Western legal perspectives.

UNODC was established in 1997 through the merger of the UN Drug Control Programme and the Centre for International Crime Prevention. It is the custodian of the three international drug control conventions (1961, 1971, 1988), the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (Palermo, 2000) and its protocols on trafficking in persons, migrant smuggling, and firearms, and the UN Convention against Corruption (2003). Its mandate sits at the intersection of law enforcement, public health, and development. The global drug control regime is under significant strain. The synthetic opioid crisis, driven by fentanyl and its analogues, has caused historic overdose mortality in North America and is now spreading. At the same time, a growing number of states — including Canada, Uruguay, Germany, and several US jurisdictions — have moved toward cannabis legalization or harm-reduction frameworks that challenge the prohibitionist consensus. Meanwhile, transnational organized crime has diversified into cybercrime, environmental crime, and the trafficking of persons along major migration routes, while corruption continues to undermine governance and SDG implementation. UNODC's debates center on how to modernize a 20th-century treaty architecture for 21st-century criminal economies, balance public-health and law-enforcement approaches, and ensure that capacity-building in the Global South is not subordinated to the priorities of major donors.

ECOSOC, established under the UN Charter in 1945, is the principal body coordinating the UN's economic, social, and environmental work and serves as the central platform for follow-up on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. It oversees the functional commissions (including the Statistical Commission, CND, CSW), regional commissions, and many specialized agencies, and convenes the annual High-Level Political Forum on the SDGs. Two issues dominate today's agenda. First is a sovereign debt crisis in the developing world: rising interest rates, post-pandemic fiscal pressures, and currency depreciation have pushed dozens of low- and middle-income countries — particularly in Africa and Latin America — into debt distress. The G20 Common Framework, designed to coordinate creditor treatment including China and private bondholders, has been criticized as slow and inadequate, prompting calls led by African states for a UN-led sovereign debt restructuring mechanism. Second is the build-out of Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) — interoperable systems for digital identity, payments, and data exchange — following the 2024 UN Global Digital Compact, which committed states to inclusive, rights-respecting digital transformation. The core dispute is over governance: whether financial and digital architectures will continue to be shaped primarily by the IMF, World Bank, and major private actors, or whether the UN will gain a stronger normative and operational role demanded by the Global South.

The Human Rights Council was created in 2006 to replace the discredited Commission on Human Rights, with a stronger mandate to address violations through the Universal Periodic Review, country-specific mandates, and thematic Special Rapporteurs. Based in Geneva and composed of 47 elected member states, the Council has become both a vital venue for human-rights diplomacy and a flashpoint between competing visions of universal versus sovereignty-based interpretations of rights. Two emerging agendas now dominate. First, generative AI: the 2024 OHCHR report on AI and human rights catalyzed debate over how the ICCPR — particularly Article 19 on freedom of expression and Article 17 on privacy — applies to algorithmic content moderation, biometric surveillance, and automated decision-making. Proposals include a new Special Rapporteur on AI and a binding framework on algorithmic accountability. Second, climate and human rights: following GA Resolution 76/300 recognizing the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment, and the ICJ's 2025 advisory proceedings on climate obligations, the Council is debating how to operationalize this right for climate-displaced populations, who fall into legal gaps between refugee, migration, and disaster law. Underlying these debates is the persistent divide between states favoring strong individual-rights enforcement and those emphasizing non-interference, development, and 'cultural specificity.'

The Security Council is the UN organ with primary responsibility for international peace and security, empowered under Chapter VII to authorize sanctions, peacekeeping, and the use of force. Its structure — five permanent members with veto power (P5) alongside ten elected members — has been largely unchanged since 1945, and its perceived paralysis on Ukraine, Gaza, Syria, and Sudan has reinvigorated debates over reform and use of the veto, including the 2022 'veto initiative' requiring an explanation before the General Assembly. The Council's current agenda is exceptionally heavy. The war in Sudan, which erupted in April 2023 between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces, has produced the world's largest displacement crisis and persistent famine conditions, yet enforcement of the Resolution 1591 arms embargo on Darfur remains weak. The Council is also seized of Russia's war in Ukraine, the Gaza conflict and its regional spillover, instability in the Sahel following multiple coups and the withdrawal of UN missions, and the rapidly evolving question of cybersecurity and critical infrastructure, where the Open-Ended Working Group on ICTs is negotiating norms for responsible state behavior. The central question for delegates is how a Council designed for a post-1945 order can act credibly amid sharp P5 polarization.

Founded in 1948, the WHO is the UN's specialized agency for international public health, governed by the World Health Assembly. It administers the International Health Regulations (IHR, last substantially revised in 2005 and amended again in 2024) and sets global norms on disease control, medicines, and health systems. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed major weaknesses: uneven surveillance, inequitable access to vaccines and therapeutics, and politicized cooperation. In response, member states negotiated the WHO Pandemic Agreement, adopted in May 2025, which now enters a contentious implementation phase. The most disputed elements concern Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing (PABS) — under which states sharing pathogen samples receive guaranteed access to resulting vaccines and treatments — and obligations on technology transfer and equitable distribution. High-income states, home to most pharmaceutical innovators, have resisted strong binding obligations, while many Global South states view PABS and tech transfer as preconditions for trust. In parallel, WHO is implementing the political declaration from the 2025 UN High-Level Meeting on Non-Communicable Diseases, which cause roughly 75% of global deaths but remain underfunded in international cooperation. The Organization must also navigate financial fragility — heavily reliant on voluntary, earmarked contributions — and geopolitical pressure that has at times threatened its independence.

The ICJ, seated at the Peace Palace in The Hague, is the principal judicial organ of the United Nations, established in 1945 as the successor to the Permanent Court of International Justice. It exercises two jurisdictions: contentious cases between states that have accepted its jurisdiction, and advisory opinions requested by UN organs and specialized agencies. Its judgments are binding on the parties but rely on state compliance, and its advisory opinions, while non-binding, carry significant legal and political weight. The Court's docket is currently the heaviest in its history. Major contentious cases include South Africa v. Israel on the application of the Genocide Convention in Gaza; Ukraine v. Russian Federation, also under the Genocide Convention; The Gambia v. Myanmar concerning the Rohingya; and Nicaragua v. Germany on alleged complicity in violations in Gaza. The Court has also issued or is preparing landmark advisory opinions on the legal consequences of Israel's policies in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (2024) and on the obligations of states in respect of climate change (advisory proceedings initiated by Vanuatu and a coalition of states, with the opinion delivered in 2025). For MUN purposes, the ICJ committee typically reconstructs oral proceedings and judicial deliberation on a selected case, focusing on jurisdiction, applicable law, evidence, and remedies.