Position papers are a must for GA and SA committees— though not for crisis committees. MariMUN’s position paper deadline is February 9th at 11:59 PM EST. Delegates who need an extension must message their chair beforehand. Position Paper submission links can be found on the committees’ page under each individual committee tab. Please keep in mind that position papers are necessary in order to be eligible for an award.

What is a position paper, and what does it aim to achieve?

A position paper, written in the third person usually (except for crises, which are a bit different), is used to express your country or character’s stance on the topic of your committee. Since the position paper is limited in length, it usually doesn’t delve too much into details – however, it does guide you in general in your research (which should delve into more details!) and opinions or policies as a country or character, and prepares you for debate.

A position paper does not answer everything in the background guide. It provides an overview of your country or character’s response, but it doesn’t answer all the guiding questions or topics brought up. Additional research outside of your position paper is usually where you should be addressing what you didn’t have space to put in your paper. In most conferences, including MariMUN 2023, position papers are required to qualify for awards.

How should you format your position paper?

Length: 1-1½ pages (line spacing 1.5, around 700 words)

Margins: 1-inch

Font: Times New Roman, Arial, Calibri, or any other standard font, size 12

Header: Your header should be in the following format, aligned left and bolded:

Committee Name or UN Body Name

Country or Character

Your Name

Example: United Nations Security Council

Japan

Jaiden Smith

Where do you start?

Background Guide Read your background guide, and annotate it if you feel necessary. It should provide you with a pretty detailed overview of the topic you will be covering during the conference. If you don’t know where to start after reading it, look at the guiding questions, and research your country or character’s stance on them.

Research Once you feel like you have a grasp of the topic of your committee, research where your country or character stands in all this. What are past actions they’ve taken? Have they previously spoken up about the issue? What policies do they currently have implemented in relation to this topic? Remember that not all your research needs to go in your position paper! However, a lot of it will turn out to be useful during committee sessions, so don’t just throw all of it away after writing your position paper. If you ever get lost during research, go back to the guiding questions to realign yourself! 

What can a position paper’s structure look like?

Topic & Stance Introduction: In a short first paragraph, introduce the topic, identify the issues or questions that arise from it and that you will be trying to resolve, and introduce how your country or character feels about it.

Previous UN Actions: As part of the first paragraph or as a smaller follow-up paragraph, you can discuss the history of the issues, such as what’s been done about them, and how those attempts succeeded or failed.

Your Country or Character’s Position: The following paragraph should detail what’s your country or character’s stance on the topic. Aim to cover some of the guiding questions here. You should also mention your country or character’s history with the topic – what policies they’ve implemented in the past, how they’ve reacted to it, etc. Use these past actions to support your current stance.

Solutions: Either as part of the previous paragraph or as another one, explore possible solutions that your country or character would propose in response to the topic and issue at hand. This doesn’t have to be extremely specific, but it should provide a good preview of your country or character’s intentions and opinions.

Conclusion: You can have a short conclusion to wrap things up.

Bibliography: Create an extra page after your text for your works cited. These should preferably be in MLA format. Your sources don’t need to be academic.