Competing Draft Resolutions

When Drafts Collide

In both real UN negotiations and MUN committees, multiple groups often produce competing draft resolutions on the same topic. This isn't a failure of the process — it's a feature. Competing drafts represent genuinely different visions for how to address a problem, and the process of debating, merging, or choosing between them produces stronger outcomes.

At the UN, competing drafts arise regularly in politically charged contexts. On Israel-Palestine, Western states and Arab states routinely submit rival resolutions reflecting fundamentally different framings of the conflict. On cybersecurity, the US-led group and the Russia-led group maintained parallel processes for years — the Group of Governmental Experts (GGE) and the Open-Ended Working Group (OEWG) — each producing separate reports with different emphases.

In MUN, competing working papers typically emerge when two or more blocs cannot agree on core issues: the scope of the problem, the balance between sovereignty and international action, or the allocation of resources and responsibility. Knowing how to handle this situation — whether to merge, outmaneuver, or propose a synthesis — is a critical committee skill.

Strategic Responses to Competing Drafts

When you face a competing draft, you have four strategic options:

Option 1: Merge. If the drafts share enough common ground, propose a merger. This is the chairs' preferred outcome in most MUN committees. To merge successfully, identify the overlapping clauses, negotiate the conflicting ones, and be prepared to sacrifice some of your original language. The delegation that proposes the merger often gets to control the merged text's structure.

Option 2: Absorb. If your draft is stronger, invite the other group's delegates to join yours by incorporating their most important clauses. This is politically graceful — you're offering them ownership rather than defeat. Frame it as 'strengthening our shared draft' rather than 'abandoning yours.'

Option 3: Differentiate. If the drafts reflect genuinely irreconcilable approaches, sharpen the differences and compete for votes. Focus your speeches on explaining why your approach is more realistic, better funded, or more in line with international law. Seek procedural advantages — having your draft voted on first, or proposing amendments that weaken the competing text.

Option 4: Synthesize. Propose a new draft that takes elements from both competing versions while adding your own framing. This 'third way' approach works when both existing drafts have obvious weaknesses and you can position yourself as the reasonable middle ground.

The Art of the Merger

Most MUN chairs strongly encourage merging competing drafts, and for good reason — it demonstrates consensus-building, which is what MUN awards reward. Here's how to approach a merger negotiation effectively:

Step 1: Map the overlap. Read the competing draft carefully and create a clause-by-clause comparison. You'll often find that 60-70% of the content is similar or compatible. Start the merger conversation by highlighting this shared ground — it builds goodwill.

Step 2: Identify the true conflicts. Usually only 2-3 clauses are genuinely irreconcilable. Isolate these and negotiate them directly. Everything else can be combined through straightforward editing.

Step 3: Trade, don't compromise. Instead of weakening both versions on every conflicting point, trade entire clauses. You accept their enforcement mechanism; they accept your funding structure. This produces a stronger merged text than splitting every difference.

Step 4: Control the pen. Whoever writes the merged text has enormous influence over the final product. Volunteer to be the drafter. You can shape structure, emphasis, and framing while incorporating the agreed-upon content. The person holding the pen decides what 'incorporating both perspectives' looks like in practice.