Private Communiqué

In crisis-style Model UN committees, a private communiqué is a directed, confidential message that a delegate sends through the crisis staff (often called the "backroom" or "crisis room") to another party. Unlike a public directive or a committee-wide press release, a private communiqué is read only by its sender, its named recipient, and the crisis staff who route it. This makes it the primary tool for covert diplomacy, espionage, bribery, secret alliances, and personal scheming inside a cabinet, joint crisis committee (JCC), or historical crisis simulation.

Communiqués typically take one of several forms:

• Delegate-to-delegate within the same room, used to coordinate without alerting rivals.
• Cross-cabinet in a JCC, allowing, for example, a Confederate general to negotiate with a Union counterpart off the record.
• Delegate-to-NPC, where the sender contacts a non-present actor (a journalist, an arms dealer, a foreign monarch) whose response is voiced by the crisis staff.

Standard formatting includes the sender's portfolio title, the named recipient, a date or in-character timestamp, and a clear request or instruction. Because crisis staff must adjudicate plausibility, vague or overreaching communiqués ("I take over the country") are usually downgraded or denied. Effective ones are narrow, in-character, and consistent with the delegate's resources and authority.

Communiqués differ from crisis notes (or "directives"), which are arcs of personal action a delegate undertakes using their own portfolio powers. A directive does something; a communiqué says something to someone. In practice the two are layered: a delegate might send a communiqué requesting cooperation, then file a directive that depends on the reply.

Confidentiality is enforced by staff, but leaks are an in-game risk. Many circuits — including conferences run by Harvard, Yale, and McGill — treat intercepted or leaked communiqués as legitimate crisis material, meaning a careless paper trail can be used against the sender later in committee.