Research Help

Preparing for a Model UN Conference can seem like a daunting experience. Generally all that you get handed to you is a nation name, a general topic, and a background guide; With only those three items, it can be difficult—especially for new delegates—to figure out where to start with research preparation. This page is not only here to help walk you through the committee/country research process but also provide as many resources as possible to help jumpstart your work! Below, we explain what questions you should be trying to answer in your research and throughout the page we have links to repositories of information for you to begin sifting through.

Read the Background Guide

With every MSUMUN committee, staffers will have assembled a document called a “background guide” months in advance of the actual conference date which is usually posted on its respective committee page. In this background guide will be a swathe of information which introduces the topic(s) that are to be discussed and handled in the committee as well as providing important historical context and details about problems that delegates will need to try and solve. A good background guide will explain each main topic in detail, break down these topics further, and also provide guiding questions at the end to assist with you research. While reading the background guide you should note/write-down a few important pieces of information:

The Geographical location and scale of the topic issue.
The main players (who is benefitting, who is losing, who is involved?)
The issues or the guide is bringing the most attention to.
Existing solutions that have already been tried or implemented.
Any questions at the end of the topic section.

Example Background Guide

Researching Your Nation and Character

Once you receive your assignment for your committee, you’ll either be assigned a nation (GA/Specialized) or a character (Specialized/Crisis) to represent at the conference. Before you can represent them and participate in debate, you’ll need to learn important context about them, their allegiances, allies, enemies, policy, and overall historical important in the context of the committee. If you haven’t already, you should read your committee background so you can start researching your own position with the context of the committee topics in mind already. Since there are 193 Member States and an near infinite amount of characters or organization you could represent in the world, there is no 1-size-fits-all resource for you to primarily use. Instead we’ve placed a few resources in the buttons to the left that you can use to start to get background information about your nation/character:

Wikipedia - A great tertiary source to learn the history, political alignment, and general details about your nation/character, just search for them!
CIA World Fact Book - A repository of information including geographical features, economic/social information, and details about nations’ government. Bias Note: While very helpful, this is a CIA owned source; it likely will not be completely (or at all) representative of your nation’s viewpoints.
Embassy.org - Information about various Washington DC foreign embassies, you can often find links to countries government website here.

More Country Research Resources and Help