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Second Continental Congress by MUN PSL

The Second Continental Congress by MUN PSL offers a unique high school level simulation, inviting delegates to engage with historical diplomatic challenges in a modern Model United Nations format. Hosted in Paris, this event provides a focused, single-day experience designed to hone participants' negotiation and public speaking skills within a structured committee setting. It stands as an accessible opportunity for students to delve into complex historical scenarios and develop their understanding of international relations.

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 3 countries stand on the dominant committee topic. Click through for the full country profile.

United StatesUnited States

Historically, representatives from the colonies sought to address grievances with the British Crown and eventually declare independence, navigating diverse interests among the colonies.

Role in topic

As the primary actors in the Second Continental Congress, delegates from the British colonies (which would become the USA) were central to debates on self-governance, military strategy, and the drafting of foundational documents.

United KingdomUnited Kingdom

The British Crown and Parliament viewed the Congress as an illegitimate assembly of rebellious subjects, aiming to assert sovereignty and suppress dissent.

Role in topic

While not directly participating in the Congress, the actions and policies of the GBR government were the direct catalyst for its formation and the subsequent decisions made by the delegates.

FranceFrance

Historically, FRA was a potential ally for the American colonies, viewing the conflict as an opportunity to weaken its rival, GBR, and regain influence.

Role in topic

Though not a direct participant in the Congress, FRA's diplomatic and military support was crucial for the success of the American cause, making its potential involvement a significant consideration for delegates.

Topics & background

The history behind each committee topic and the states that shape it.

1

World Health Organization (WHO)

The WHO was founded in 1948 as the UN's specialized agency for international public health, with a mandate to coordinate responses to disease outbreaks, set global health norms, and support member states in strengthening health systems. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed deep fractures in that system: delayed information sharing, hoarding of vaccines and personal protective equipment by wealthy states, and weak compliance with the 2005 International Health Regulations. In response, WHO member states launched parallel negotiations to amend the IHR and to draft a new Pandemic Agreement, the latter adopted by the World Health Assembly in May 2025 after more than three years of talks. The Pandemic Agreement now enters a contentious implementation phase. Core disputes center on the Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing (PABS) system, technology transfer obligations for vaccines and therapeutics, and how to fund surge manufacturing capacity in the Global South. In parallel, the 2025 UN High-Level Meeting on Non-Communicable Diseases reaffirmed 2030 targets on cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer, and mental health, but progress has been uneven and tobacco, alcohol, and ultra-processed food industries continue to shape national regulatory environments. The WHO must reconcile these long-term agendas with continuing acute emergencies, including cholera resurgences, mpox, and conflict-driven health crises in Sudan, Gaza, and Ukraine.

Key players

2

Committee for Disarmament and International Security (DISEC)

Disarmament & International Security Committee (GA First Committee)

DISEC, the First Committee of the UN General Assembly, was established with the UN itself in 1945 and inherited the disarmament mandate emphasized in the very first General Assembly resolution, which called for the elimination of atomic weapons. Over the Cold War it became the principal universal forum for arms control debate, complementing the Geneva-based Conference on Disarmament. Its resolutions are non-binding but shape treaty negotiations, including the NPT, CWC, BWC, CCW, ATT, and the more recent Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Today DISEC's agenda is dominated by emerging-technology arms control. Negotiations within the CCW Group of Governmental Experts on Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems have stalled over whether to pursue a binding instrument requiring meaningful human control or to rely on non-binding political declarations; a 2023 GA resolution accelerated parallel work in New York. In outer space, anti-satellite tests by Russia, China, India, and the United States, combined with the proliferation of dual-use mega-constellations, have revived the long-stalled Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space (PAROS) agenda. Cyber norms, AI in nuclear command-and-control, and the future of the NPT regime after a failed 2022 Review Conference round out an unusually crowded agenda.

Key players

3

United Nations General Assembly Sixth Committee

UN General Assembly Sixth Committee (Legal)

The Sixth Committee is the primary forum within the General Assembly for the consideration of legal questions and has operated since 1945. It works closely with the International Law Commission (ILC), reviewing draft articles that have produced foundational instruments such as the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, the Rome Statute, and the articles on State Responsibility. Unlike political committees, the Sixth Committee proceeds largely by consensus and its outputs often crystallize into customary international law or treaty negotiations. Current agenda items reflect the strain that contemporary crises place on the international legal order. States are debating the long-running ILC draft articles on Crimes Against Humanity, which many governments wish to move toward a treaty negotiation, while others, including major powers, resist. The Committee is also seized of the scope and application of universal jurisdiction, measures to eliminate international terrorism (including the elusive comprehensive convention), the rule of law at the national and international levels, and the legal implications of sea-level rise for statehood and maritime boundaries — an issue driven by Pacific small island states. Sovereign immunities, accountability for aggression in the context of Ukraine, and the relationship between the ICJ and ICC also feature prominently.

Key players

4

United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC)

The Human Rights Council was created by GA Resolution 60/251 in 2006 to replace the discredited Commission on Human Rights. Based in Geneva and composed of 47 elected members, it conducts the Universal Periodic Review of every UN member state, appoints Special Rapporteurs and Independent Experts, and authorizes Commissions of Inquiry into the gravest abuses. It has been a politically charged body from the outset, with recurrent debates over country-specific mandates, the participation of states with poor rights records, and the United States' on-again, off-again membership. The Council's 2026 agenda is shaped by two structural shifts. First, the 2024 OHCHR report on AI and human rights and the Global Digital Compact have pushed states toward a binding framework for algorithmic accountability, with debate focused on how ICCPR Article 19 applies to content moderation and whether to create a Special Rapporteur on AI. Second, following GA Resolution 76/300 recognizing the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, the Council is wrestling with how to operationalize that right for populations displaced by climate change — a category that current refugee law does not clearly cover. Country situations in Sudan, Myanmar, Iran, the occupied Palestinian territory, Ukraine, and Xinjiang remain on the docket and continue to generate the Council's sharpest divisions.

Key players

5

United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC)

ECOSOC, established under Chapter X of the UN Charter, coordinates the economic, social, and related work of fourteen UN specialized agencies, ten functional commissions, and five regional commissions. Since 2015 its central reference point has been the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals, which it tracks through the annual High-Level Political Forum. Progress toward the SDGs has stalled badly. The combined shocks of COVID-19, the war in Ukraine, higher interest rates, and climate disasters have produced what UN DESA calls an SDG financing gap of roughly USD 4 trillion per year for developing countries. A growing number of low-income states are in or near debt distress, and the G20 Common Framework for debt restructuring has been criticized as slow and creditor-friendly, prompting African and Latin American states to push for a UN-led sovereign debt mechanism in the run-up to the Fourth Financing for Development Conference. In parallel, the 2024 Global Digital Compact has placed digital public infrastructure — identity, payments, and data exchange systems — at the center of ECOSOC's development agenda, with debate over governance, interoperability, and protections against surveillance and exclusion.

Key players

6

The Continental Congress

The Second Continental Congress (1775–1781)

The Second Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia in May 1775, weeks after the battles of Lexington and Concord, succeeding the First Continental Congress that had met the previous autumn to coordinate colonial resistance to the Coercive Acts. Delegates arrived divided: a substantial faction still sought reconciliation with George III, sending the Olive Branch Petition in July 1775, while others, radicalized by ongoing fighting around Boston, pressed for fuller war measures. Congress nevertheless created the Continental Army in June 1775 and appointed George Washington as commander-in-chief, taking on de facto sovereign functions before any declaration of independence. Over the next several years Congress declared independence in July 1776, drafted the Articles of Confederation (finalized in 1777 and ratified in 1781), negotiated the decisive 1778 alliance with France, and managed the financial and logistical strain of a continental war effort with no power to tax. The core disputes — representation between large and small states, the apportionment of war costs, control over western lands, the status of enslaved people, and the balance between state sovereignty and central authority — would foreshadow nearly every fault line of the later Constitutional Convention. The Congress in this period must reconcile immediate military emergencies with the construction of a workable confederation and the diplomatic project of securing foreign recognition.

Key players

7

United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)

UNEP was established by GA Resolution 2997 in 1972 following the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment, becoming the UN's principal voice on the environment. Headquartered in Nairobi, it has midwifed many of the foundational environmental treaties, including the Vienna Convention and Montreal Protocol on ozone, the Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm conventions on hazardous substances, the Minamata Convention on mercury, and the climate regime that begins with the IPCC, which UNEP co-founded with the WMO. Its governing body, the UN Environment Assembly (UNEA), meets biennially and is increasingly the venue where new global environmental rules are negotiated. UNEP's current agenda is anchored by three intersecting crises: climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution. Negotiations on a legally binding instrument on plastic pollution, launched by UNEA Resolution 5/14 in 2022, have run into sharp divisions between a 'high-ambition coalition' seeking caps on virgin plastic production and major petrochemical producers preferring a downstream, waste-management focus. UNEP also tracks implementation of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework's 30x30 targets, oversees the Science-Policy Panel on chemicals, waste and pollution prevention, and produces the annual Emissions Gap Report, which continues to show that current national pledges are inconsistent with the 1.5°C goal of the Paris Agreement.

Key players

8

United Nations Security Council (UNSC)

The Security Council, created by the UN Charter in 1945, holds primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security. Its fifteen members — five permanent with the veto (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States) and ten elected for two-year terms — can authorize sanctions, peacekeeping operations, and the use of force under Chapter VII. The post-Cold War period of relatively cooperative P5 action has given way to renewed paralysis, with Russia's veto of resolutions on Ukraine, US vetoes on Gaza ceasefire texts, and Chinese-Russian coordination on Syria and Mali highlighting the limits of the Council's collective action. The current agenda is dominated by overlapping crises. The civil war between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces, which erupted in April 2023, has produced the world's largest displacement crisis and credible reports of atrocities in Darfur, while the Council's Resolution 1591 arms embargo is widely flouted. Gaza, Ukraine, Haiti, the eastern DRC, and Yemen remain on the docket alongside thematic items such as Women, Peace and Security and climate-security linkages. Cybersecurity has emerged as a recurring theme as the General Assembly's Open-Ended Working Group on ICTs negotiates norms for state behavior in cyberspace, with the Council increasingly asked to address attacks on critical infrastructure.

Key players

Key terms & resources

The concepts worth knowing before Second Continental Congress by MUN PSL, plus lessons and profiles to go deeper.

13 Steps disarmamentAfrican Continental Free Trade AreaAsia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC)Association of Southeast Asian NationsAU Peace and Security CouncilBallot Security Measures

Lessons

Courses

Country profiles

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Frequently asked questions

  • What is the eligibility level for delegates attending this event?

    The event is designed for high-school level participants, offering an educational experience tailored to this age group.

  • Where is the Second Continental Congress by MUN PSL located?

    The event takes place in Paris, FRA, providing an international setting for the simulation.

  • What format does the conference follow?

    This is a single-day conference, offering a focused and intensive Model UN experience.

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