Where do I start researching for a GA?

Read the background guide (and other conference materials). Even if it’s long, read the entire thing as it should give you a good sense of the following.

1. Topic Background

2. Current tensions

3. Relevant statistics

4. Sub-topics

5. Committee information

Find general information about your country. Two preliminary sources you should look at are are The World Factbook and BBC NEWS | Country Profiles. Pay attention to your country’s main allies and enemies so you know who your delegation would work with (ex: so you know not to work with North Korea if you are the United States). 

Take a look at the news. Try to see what your country has been up to most recently to get a better sense of their perspective.

Learn about your committee. Each United Nations committee has limitations and objectives. You want to make sure you know about the jurisdiction, objectives, current actions, and past actions of your committee to ensure that your ideas are practical. In order to find our more about your committee, try to find its United Nations website, and—if you have time—read the committee's mandate.

Start researching for your position paper. While it changes depending on the conference, position papers are generally split into four categories: topic background, past international action, country policy, and possible solutions.

1. Topic background. A good place to start is by looking at the sources cited in the background guide, though you should always use more sources to show you actually did your own research. This is information that’s usually widely available with the magic of Google. If you want another place to start, you can find the Wikipedia page on your topic and look at the list of sources at the bottom of the article. Don’t actually cite Wikipedia.

2. Past international action. This is only international action, not action your country has taken (that comes in the next section). While you’re researching for the topic background, you will usually come across past international action, so you can expand on that here. You should also find past UN resolutions on the topic which you can find at this link. You should also discuss any international conventions and treaties, which can be found at the United Nations Treaty Collection. Finally, look into what key NGOs have done surrounding your topic (this can also be found via the magic of Google).

3. Country policy. This is where you research your country’s stance on the topic, and what they’ve done concerning the issue. Yet again, you can use the magic of Google to find most of this information. Another great place to look is your country’s official government website (most have places to search for particular keywords). You should also look at the local news and take note of the bias of your country (whether it shows through the language or the information that is included) so you can accurately reflect it. You can Google what some of the popular newspapers are in your country, and look at their websites for more information on country stance (Google Translate often comes in handy here). 

4. Possible solutions. This is the most important part of your paper. Remember that this isn’t what the country wants to do to improve the issue for itself—it’s international action, which is why it’s being discussed at the UN. If you can’t think of any creative ideas immediately, consider why past international action has failed, and the issue still exists. You can also think about what has worked in your country to combat the issue, and whether you can magnify that on a global scale to work for other countries. Finally, think about existing UN programmes (which you should have found in your research of past international action) and NGOs. You can build on these to craft good solutions. The more specific and detailed your solutions and research about them are, the better.

Keep researching up until the date of the conference. We would recommend setting a google alert for your topic or bookmarking a popular news site (WaPo, NYT, WSJ, etc.) and searching for relevant keywords every day to check if there’s any news on your topic. Since most chairs (except for historical committees) pick their topics based current events, you can expect new developments to occur between the time you submitted your position paper and the day of the conference. Remember to consider your country's response to these new developments.