Policy Papers

As a general procedure, all committees of this conference will be requiring typed policy papers submitted no later than November 21st, 2025 at 11:59PM. This is a hard deadline set to ensure each committee's chairs have enough time to grade and give feed back to each delegate on their written performance. Delegates who do not meet this deadline are still welcome to submit their papers for review, but they will not be eligible for the Best Paper Award. This has no effect on the delegate's eligibility for other awards (although writing a good paper certainly helps with all aspects of a delegate's performance!).

In each committee, the paper with the strongest construction will be awarded the Best Paper Award. This means the winning paper must accomplish the goals of effectively conveying its corresponding country's foreign policy and creating a solution that balances creativity and pragmatism with exceptional detail. And it must do so better than its peers. The following guide is meant to help new delegates get a sense for the general expectations for a paper. Please pay close attention to all of the guidelines!

Example Policy Paper

Feel free to use this document as a helpful guide for your own paper, but don't feel restricted by it! 

The composition of this paper is described much more thoroughly below in the guidelines.

How to Construct a Policy Paper

1. Formatting

• Arguably the easiest part of the whole process (but you'd be surprised how many points are lost in this category by the majority of papers!)

• Beginning with the text formatting, a policy paper should be written in 12 pt font, Times New Roman, double spaced, one-inch margins, with one line of space between each paragraph. 

• Each paper must include 3 paragraphs! No more. No less. A general benchmark many delegates like to use is keeping each paragraph to a maximum length of around 15 lines. Note, however, that a well-written paragraph might accomplish all the necessary goals in less than 15 lines. 

• Each paragraph serves a very distinct purpose. While the content across these paragraphs can (and should) be related to imply a multifaceted perspective of a country's approach to the specific problem, each paragraph should serve only its own distinct purpose.

• Policy papers must be truncated such that all content is contained on one singular page without making any changes to fonts, font size, spacing, or paragraph spacing. Any content that overflows onto any subsequent pages will be disregarded and deleted from copies sent for grading.

• Please also note that any and all acronyms should be defined the first time they are introduced in the paper.

• No personal pronouns. You may refer to your country as its abridged name ("Nigeria" rather than "The Federal Republic of Nigeria") but never use "I" or "we" or even "they."

• Use formal and congressional language. 

• There is no need for introductory or closing remarks or transitions between paragraphs.

2. The Header

• Each paper will begin with a header that is meant to identify the country and committee a paper belongs to. Headers follow the same formatting as specified above for the entire document, but they must be written in all capital letters. The header consists of 3 lines: a country's formal name, the committee's name, and the topic of the committee.

3. The Body

1. 1.  First Paragraph: This paragraph is the least consequential to a paper's overall score. However, overlooking its value to the overall essay is a fatal but common mistake many new delegates make. In this paragraph, the delegate is meant to outline some key actions the UN has taken to address the issue the committee is debating. These can be past UN resolutions; UN organizations, programs, or charters; UN goals including the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The most important thing is to choose 3-4 actions or commitments made by the UN and to quantify, quantify, quantify! Introduce the specific UN action/organization, if it is an organization, describe its purpose, provide a metric to quantify the scale of impact this organization has had, imply or explicitly state if this specific organ of action is still mobile or retired. 

• TIP: The strategic delegate will look for UN actions or organizations that their country has some level of involvement in. Without explicitly mentioning the specific country's role in the first paragraph, they will point out UN actions which their country has supported (signatory to a resolution, participant in a program, etc.) because this will convey a more robust message of their overall foreign policy. 

1. 2.  Second Paragraph: Here the delegate will focus on developing a strong image of their country's foreign policy. Find 3-4 details that convey the position your country takes on this specific issue. This can be laws, national programs, or policy initiatives your country has taken. For example, in a committee about protecting refugee rights, Bangladesh might mention the Joint Response Plan (JRP) for the Rohingya Humanitarian Crisis. Many delegates will underestimate the value of this paragraph but mastering it will really transform the flow of the entire paper. Think of it this way: the second paragraph is like a pair of glasses; it makes clear the intentions of all the other sentences in the paper.

      • TIP: The strategic delegate will mention in this paragraph that their country is a signatory or participant of the UN programs or resolutions mentioned above. They will also hint here the general ideas that might make up the solution to the issue that is developed in the third paragraph. In this way, they treat the second paragraph like a bridge between the other two paragraphs.

   3.  Third Paragraph: This is arguably the most important paragraph in the paper. Here, you will introduce your country's solution to the problem. You can choose a solution that already exists or you can create your own (we recommend the latter). The key is to be as detailed as possible!! If need be, shorten the other paragraphs to make more room for this one. The clearer your solution in this paragraph, the better you will do in committee. Having a strong, clear plan will do so much for you in conference. Here's a checklist of details you should aim to cover (in order of importance):

1) An explicit name for your solution

2) What UN bodies, global organizations, or alternative committees are involved

3) What actions these bodies or organizations must take to attain the objective

4) The potential negative impacts of the adoption of this policy and methods to offset those impacts

5) How the success of this initiative will be measured (bonus points if you sketch a general timeline) and how the program will be overseen

6) How this solution can be made compatible and respectful of varying degrees of cultural differences and national sovereignty

Please note that this list is not exhaustive and there are many more factors that go into creating a solution to a global issue. The more detail, the better. This, however, means that a well written paper demands strategic brevity. Every single word matters and must have a unique contribution to the paper.

Please also note that UN member states cannot FORCE any other country to do anything. Period. Point blank. Use language like "encourage," "suggest," even "urges." NEVER use threats, bribes, or any other methods of coercion to enact or encite support for a solution.

1. 3. • TIP: The strategic delegate ties everything together here. From the previous two paragraphs, they have gathered an idea of what has worked in the past and what hasn't. Without pointing out any specific faults in previous UN actions or foreign policy measures, the strategic delegate will build on past solutions. Their solution will encase the successes of previous actions and create amendments to address shortcomings. The truth is that if those UN actions were 100% successful, you would not be debating the topic. Try to dig deeper into what exactly made it not 100% successful and use that insight to strengthen your own solution. Please avoid at all costs speaking ill of a UN action or your own country's (or any country's for that matter) approach.

Congratulations on making it to the end of this guide! Now go back and read the example paper again :)