The Basic Guide for GA Committees by Zeynep KESKİN

Hi everyone, I’m Zeynep and in this article, I will be informing you about  “The Basic Guide for GA Committees”. As we all know, GA committees are commonly seen as “first-timer committees” or “easy committees”. As a delegate who has attended many GA committees, I strongly disagree. This article is intended to be a guide for delegates who wish to have a proper and fruitful GA experience.

1) Process of preparation:

To get ready for GA committees, there are steps to learn or to remember before you even go to the conference itself. These contain: researching thoroughly about your committee’s agenda item, not only the perspective of your country about the specific matter but also other countries’ who have a strong attitude about the agenda item (most commonly includes P5+1), and most importantly, reading your study guides.
While some conferences prepare study guides that are more than enough for a delegate to be prepared for the committee; some conferences prepare study guides that are irrelevant, too short, ineffective, and not satisfying enough. In that case, you have a bigger responsibility of researching on your own and being aware of almost everything going on regarding your committee’s agenda item.
I can confidently say that this preparation stage is the most important step of the process. Since GA committees don’t really expect surprising updates that affect speeches, you might as well write your opening speeches and a few GSL’s to have in advance, but don’t forget to write new speeches as the debates’ direction changes in the committee!

2) The process of the conference itself:

After you’ve done all your preparations and you feel ready for the conference, you’re at this stage of getting started at your part of the committee. You can get more information about the things to do when meeting the delegates and the committee board members in my previous article “Do’s and Don’ts in a MUN conference”.

After you’ve completed the meeting and the fun session (if there is) you’ll get to the formal session that contains: roll call, GSL, motions, and debates. During these, you should stay updated about where the debate is going and how it develops. To write an effective and detailed resolution in the next sessions, note the passed motions that have been proposed by all delegates, note the debates that the motion brought, and note the discussed solutions – if there are any. That is the most important part of this stage.

Keeping detailed notes lead to having detailed working papers. That not only leads to detailed resolutions but also will make your job easier when you are writing your resolution paper, causing you and other delegates to spend less time and effort and do it easily. During the debates, always have a friendly approach and attitude. Otherwise, you may be disliked during the conference, which can trigger some delegates to argue with you unnecessarily. That can cause unwanted situations during the committee.

Also, when debating, never diverge from your country’s perspective of the specific matter to your personal thoughts. That will both seem like an amateur delegate and lower the quality of debate during sessions. Another point that you should pay attention to is being too ambitious for awards. We can all agree that awards are a goal for all delegates that push us to do our very best, but as I have mentioned before, some delegates may act overly aggressive or even rude, don’t be one of those delegates. Even though I believe that you’ll get an award when you follow this guide, if you don’t get an award, don’t worry. You may develop life-long friendships which could count as an award too!

3)Writing the resolution:

Writing the resolution is also one of the most important stages in a conference. Many chair board members and USGs choose the delegates who are to be awarded at this stage. Some USGs want a working paper before the draft resolution. If that happens to be the case for you, as I have mentioned above, use your notes and basically gather up all the information that you have noted.
Use phrases such as “We discussed…, we came up with…”. When your working paper gets approved, start on working your draft resolution with the other delegates. Separate the parts that you specified in your working paper as the things you have discussed and came up with, and then add the clauses that you’ve decided with the other delegates. Make sure that in both preambulatory and operative clauses, that you don’t use the same clause multiple times if not necessary. Also, be careful about the layout of the resolution. Nobody likes a disorganized paper.

4) To sum everything up:

MUN conferences are not events that are enough to be only informed about. Only by attending more conferences, you’ll get wiser and well-experienced. The best way to learn what to do is by attending the conferences themselves. You can guide yourself better than anyone else.

Zeynep KESKİN

The Content Producer Team