How to Research for Model UN (Step by Step)

The background guide is written by the chairs who will run your committee and often judge awards. It tells you what they think the topic is about, which sub-issues matter, and what a good resolution must answer. Read it once for understanding, then a second time with a pen, turning every section into questions you need to research for your country. Many guides end with a list of questions a resolution must answer (often called QARMAs). If yours does, that list is your research agenda.

Before you research the topic, know the basics of the country you represent. You do not need its whole history. You need the handful of facts that explain its behavior on this topic, and you need them fast enough to answer a question in a moderated caucus without looking anything up.

This is the most important step and the one most delegates skip. What a country has voted and said at the UN is the best evidence of its position. Start with votes, because they are unambiguous, then read statements to learn why the country voted that way. Your position paper and speeches should paraphrase your country's own reasoning, not reasons you invented.

Chairs reward resolutions that build on what the UN has already done: welcoming earlier resolutions, using existing bodies, and filling a real gap. To do that, you need the document trail. Start with the documents the background guide cites, then follow each one forward (later resolutions on the same topic) and sideways (reports it requested, bodies it created).

Committees split into groups that write competing draft resolutions. You can predict most of those groups before the conference by looking at who voted the same way as your country and which negotiating groups it belongs to. Bloc mapping tells you who to find in the first unmoderated caucus, and who you will be negotiating against.

Pick the two or three countries in your committee most likely to oppose your position and spend 15 to 20 minutes on each. You are looking for their strongest argument and the fact that weakens it, so that when they make the argument in a speech you already have your answer.

Everything above compresses onto one page (two for a double-topic committee). This is what you glance at before every speech and what you hand to a partner who is taking over in an unmoderated caucus. If a fact is not on this page, you probably will not use it in committee.

If you did Steps 1-7, the position paper is mostly assembly. A common structure has three parts per topic: background and past UN action (from Step 4), your country's policy and record (Step 3), and proposed solutions (your clause ideas). Your opening speech is the binder's top line, one piece of evidence and your two strongest solutions, delivered in about a minute.

Here is the process run on one real assignment: you are India, the committee is DISEC (the General Assembly First Committee), and the topic is lethal autonomous weapons systems, sometimes called 'killer robots'. Every fact below comes from UN records or India's Ministry of External Affairs, and every one is the kind of fact you can find yourself in an evening using the steps above.

Searching the UN's meetings coverage and voting records for 'lethal autonomous weapons systems' turns up a short, clear trail. Note how much you learn from the committee vote, the plenary vote a year later, and the report in between.

Votes show what India did. To know why, go to India's own words. India's Ministry of External Affairs states that India considers the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) the appropriate forum for discussing lethal autonomous weapons systems, with the aim of balancing military necessity and humanitarian imperatives, and that the work of the CCW's Group of Governmental Experts on the subject should continue within that framework.

The 2023 committee vote gives you a first map. India voted with a small group against, and a different group abstained. That is not a ready-made alliance: the states that voted against the draft, or abstained, do not necessarily share India's reasons. It does tell you where to look first.

Research does not stop when committee starts. New sub-topics come up, another delegate cites a figure you have never seen, or the chairs introduce a crisis update. The skill in committee is fast, targeted research: one question, one source, back into the debate within a few minutes.

Catching a wrong or out-of-date figure is one of the most effective moves in committee, but only if you are right. Check the original source, the year and the exact wording before you raise it, and raise it as a point about the evidence, not an attack on the delegate.

Before you put a clause into a draft, check three things: that the body you are asking to act exists and has the mandate, that the UN has not already done exactly this, and that your country would support it. A clause that 'creates' something that already exists, or asks a body to do something outside its mandate, is an easy target in debate.

Good citation habits start on day one of research, not the night before the position paper is due. Every time you copy a fact, copy where it came from. It takes seconds, and it means you can defend any claim when a chair or another delegate asks for the source.

Security Council research adds two things to the standard process. First, the Council acts through its own resolutions and presidential statements, so trace the Council's document trail on the situation, not just the General Assembly's. Second, the veto changes the math: a substantive resolution needs at least nine votes in favour and no veto from a permanent member, so you must know where each permanent member stands even if you are an elected member.

In a crisis committee you often represent a person (a minister, general or official) rather than a country. Research that person's real role, powers and relationships, because your directives will be judged on whether that person could plausibly do what you propose. In a historical committee, research only what was known on the committee's start date: an argument that relies on events that had not yet happened breaks the simulation.

The All India Political Parties Meet (AIPPM), common at Indian Model UN conferences, and similar national committees (a US Senate, a cabinet) ask you to represent a politician and their party rather than a country. The process is the same shape, with different sources: the politician replaces the country, the party manifesto and parliamentary record replace UN votes, and coalitions replace blocs.