Position Paper Comments and General Concerns

Delegates,

Your graded position papers are now on Huxley!

Please be sure to check them out and read through the comments. The comments on the papers will help you understand what you should further research and provide details for going into committee. Hopefully, they will really help you clarify and specify the solutions that you want to present to committee. We attempted to ask thoughtful questions which will help you recognize some of the nuances and difficulties with solving these topics.

From reading these papers, some of the biggest concerns which the Dias noticed are:

  • Peacekeepers are not always seen as neutral by many countries. Their presence could undermine the neutrality of aid workers. Be sure to understand the problems with Peacekeepers and be ready to defend your use of them if you plan to have them as a solution.
  • Be sure your solutions adhere to the SMART framework (Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic, Timely). These solutions should have an exact plan as to how you want to implement them and detailed enough instructions that if someone were to read it they would know exactly how to accomplish your goal. 
  • Provide information as to why exactly you know your solutions will work. Remember the point of many of your speeches is to present and convince other delegates why they should be implemented. Having past successful examples, facts/statistics, or quotes of endorsement by important people, are all helpful ways in convincing committee your solutions will be successful.
  • Remember in your position papers and committee, you are acting as a representation of your country (like of government official). Even if you do not personally agree with your country's actions, you need to be able defend them.
  • The ICC can only charge individuals, not entire groups or state actors. For example the ICC could not charge the nation of Syria or the entirety of ISIS working within it, but it could charge Bashar al-Assad, the nation's president, or Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, an ISIS leader.     
Hopefully, these points clear up some common misunderstandings and points of concern! As always, feel free to reach out to us at unhrclxvii@bmun.org with any questions.

Best,

Annalise Fox
Head Chair, UNHRC LXVII

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