Upload Position Paper

Once you have completed your preliminary research, you are ready to write your position paper. Unless otherwise indicated in the respective committee background guide, HNMUN Africa requires delegates to write a one single-spaced page position paper. Each position paper has three basic parts: your country’s national interests, your country’s national policies, and your opinion on potential resolution components (not entire resolutions). National interests are what a country would like to see happen in the world (e.g. Cameroon, a lesser developed country troubled by terrorism, wants to reduce the incidence of terrorism to stabilize its government). These interests are not subject to compromise, but instead generally idealized goals or methods of solving specific problems.

National policies are the country’s attempts to secure its interests (e.g. Cameroon, in an effort to combat terrorism, has sought to enter into new extradition treaties). These policy positions are usually open to negotiation. These policies must be consistent with your country’s national interests and current national policies (e.g. Cameroon feels that any resolution on the prevention of terrorism must assign to the injured state the right to try the terrorists. In addition, Cameroon would not be averse to the establishment of an international information network on terrorism. Cameroon, however, will not support any resolution that allows terrorist acts to be protected from extradition under the political offense exception doctrine). 

Writing position papers benefits you in many ways. The staff reads over the position papers and summarizes them in order to gauge what the committee will be like and to see which delegates have done a good job preparing for the conference. Most importantly, writing a position paper makes you think about the information you have researched and helps you to express ideas concisely and clearly, making you better prepared for the conference.

Each delegate should upload their position paper here before the start of the first committee session. Each paper may be subject to a plagiarism check. If access to electronic devices are limited, please write these by paper and submit to your director at the start of the first committee session.

Why so short?

HNMUN Africa Position papers are shorter than traditional HMUN and HNMUN position papers at our other conferences around the world. Each conference tests initiatives for use in Boston and shortened position papers is one of these. We believe that, unlike competitor conferences, keeping debate lively and in-room, instead of simply focused on regurgitating pre-written points, is best for developing lasting skills from this Model UN experience.

What does a sample position paper look like?

Committee: Disarmament and International Security, Topic: Nuclear Test Ban, Country: The Republic of Sierra Leone, School: High School Academy

The Republic of Sierra Leone believes disarmament to be crucial for the maintenance of worldwide security and considers a nuclear test ban to be an important step in the process of reaching that goal. Sierra Leone is not a nuclear power nor does it aid other countries in producing nuclear weapons. In the past, the policy of Sierra Leone has been to work diligently towards a CTBT.

The Republic of Sierra Leone supports the following proposals for a nuclear test ban treaty: The treaty must be a comprehensive and permanent one. Although Japan’s proposal to have a progressive lowering of the threshold limit until it reached zero is an interesting idea, not only does this legitimize nuclear weapon testing, it also delays a true resolution of the problem.

In addition, it gives the nuclear states a greater opportunity to escape their obligations through inevitable loopholes in the treaty.

Although peaceful nuclear explosions could potentially bring about beneficial results, the nearly insurmountable difficulty in differentiating between nuclear tests for weapons and nuclear tests for peaceful purposes makes such a distinction infeasible.