MUN Research

Step 1: Starting Your Research

  • Find out your committee
  • Find out your topic
  • If you have a partner, decide who is going to take which topic
  • Find out your country: This will be the policy that you center your arguments around

 

Step 2: Learning about your topic

  • Read your topic brief: You will find this on idia.net. When reading make sure you do the following to make sure that you’re getting the most out of the information given:
    • Read the brief carefully!! Your chair wrote the brief to show you the direction they want to take the topic when in committee. It is important that you read the brief and understand the topic to the fullest extent. The most effective way of doing this is by annotating the brief, so pick up a pen, pencil, or highlighter and remember to look for these important facts that will make further research easier:
      • important people and organizations
      • sub-issues–what caused the problem you’re trying to solve?
      • solutions in the past (what worked and what didn’t)
      • proposed solutions
      • key information that will help you form arguments or find more solutions
  • Further Research: Now that you have successfully annotated and read through the topic brief, it is now time to find more research on your topic. When doing this, it is important that you are using credible sources that you can use to cite when writing your paper.
  • Start with UN research links: Because of your topic is a prominent issue in the world, the United Nations usually has valuable links that can help you understand your topic and how the UN has resolved it in the past
    • Find any profiles, campaigns, or involvement that your UN agency has on the topic
    • Find any past resolutions that have been made on the topic. This can help guide you toward what needs to be accomplished in your committee, as well as give you ideas for your own resolutions to the problem
  • Look for credible resources on http://www.sweetsearch.com
  • Wikipedia can be a great resource for just learning background info about your topic and/or country BUT make sure you are skeptical about the information as it is user-generated contented
      • A great thing about Wikipedia is that if you don’t understand something in an article you should be able to click on one of the related words and be taken to a separate article explaining it.
      • – You should be careful never to source Wikipedia as it unreliable; however you can go the reliable websites cited at the bottom, go to those original sources to check the facts, and cite that.
      • CIA World Factbook is a reliable source with much of the same information about demographics
      • Speeches that you country has made at the United Nations or from ambassadors will often tell you what your country believes on the topic. The voting record of your country on United Nations resolutions will also be helpful. Make sure you research your committee to find out about its powers and limitations.
        NGO websites can be valuable to find suggested solutions for your topic and also can provide financing for solutions that might be expensive.

        Keep notes about the sources you used so you can easily find them later. Print out important statistics or sources you think you’ll want to reference in committee.

        Corroboration is key. A statistic or fact is more reliable if you find it from two or more sources. Here’s a great website to do that: http://www.un.org/en/sections/about-un/funds-programmes-specialized-agenciesand-others/index.html

    The official government website of your country can have valuable information

  • Think tanks, websites where public policy experts write about different issues and their solutions, may also be useful.

 

Step 3: Learning country policy

  • Now that you have a clear understanding of the topic, it is vital to your model UN experience that you understand your country’s policy on the issue.
    • See what your country has done or has said about the topic, and decide what you want to see done in committee, create an opinion through a couple factors:
      • Is your country affected by this issue? or Does it want to help or address it?
      • Is your country more conservative or liberal?
      • What has your country done in the past to address it?
      • Does your country recognize this as an actual issue?
      • What does your country want to focus on when solving this problem?