Table of Contents
- 1. Delegate (Country Representative)
- What the seat actually trains
- 2. Chair (Presiding Officer)
- How the dais prepares
- 3. Crisis Director
- The backroom runs on notes
- 4. Rapporteur
- Why the record matters more than delegates think
- 5. Head Delegate (Lead Delegate)
- Structure beats enthusiasm
- 6. Press Corps Journalist
- Print deadlines shape the story
- 7. Secretariat Member (Secretary-General and Under-Secretary-General)
- Who runs what
- How the 7 Model UN positions compare
- Pick Your Seat and Start Preparing Today
Do not index
Do not index
Your first committee session starts in ten minutes and the room isn't what the background guide described. Someone in a suit is laying out name placards at the front, a second person is testing a microphone, a third is photographing the empty chamber for a conference newspaper, and your school's head delegate is moving between chairs redistributing position papers. You assumed everyone here was a delegate. They're not.
Model UN positions are jobs, and each one changes what you should do before the gavel falls. A chair's ruling on a moderated caucus sets the clock you're speaking against. A rapporteur's log decides which version of your amendment survives into the record. A crisis director's next update can delete a strategy you spent three weeks building. Knowing who does what turns preparation from generic research into a plan aimed at specific people.
The scale makes that literacy matter. Estimates compiled in a University of Central Arkansas political-science resource indicate that approximately 400,000 students now take part in Model UN conferences annually, across roughly 400 conferences worldwide each year. You aren't memorizing a hierarchy. You're reading a room.
1. Delegate (Country Representative)
The delegate seat is the one everyone assumes they've been given, and the one many prepare for badly. You hold a single country, sometimes a bloc or a non-state actor, and you argue its foreign policy in committee: research first, position paper second, then speeches, caucus negotiation, clause-by-clause drafting and votes.
The role is older than most delegates realize. Student simulations of the League of Nations ran at Oxford in November 1921, and Harvard students organized an American International Assembly on 10 January 1923 that represented 15 nations and debated the status of Rhodes and the international opium trade, as the UNESCO account of the League of Nations records. The exercise was built to reproduce a real institution, not to stage a debate.
What the seat actually trains
Arguing from a state's interests instead of your own opinions. That shift is the entire skill, and it's measurable. A study of American Model UN participants found that first-time delegates increased their general UN knowledge, developed a more realist orientation toward international relations and placed greater emphasis on individual agency in world affairs, per the ERIC record of that study.
Habits that hold up under pressure:
- Read the voting record first. Your country's UN votes and official statements tell you what it will refuse, which is more useful than what it supports.
- Name two allies and one opponent before the first session, and check whether your bloc shares a regional group.
- Draft clause by clause using standard operative verbs: urges, calls upon, decides, recommends.
- Cite in speeches. A claim with a document reference survives a point of information. An opinion doesn't.
This week, open delegate responsibilities and map your country's three priorities onto one page before you write any prose.
2. Chair (Presiding Officer)
The chair is the person your entire speaking schedule depends on, and the one most delegates never read properly. Chairs set the speaker list, rule on points and motions, moderate caucuses, time speeches and keep debate inside the topic.
How the dais prepares
Most conferences brief their chairs before session one, hand them a scoring rubric and hold a dais meeting to agree on contested calls: whether a motion to suspend debate is in order, how strictly points of order will be enforced, whether a pre-written working paper counts as an introduction. Chairs are usually experienced delegates staffing the weekend, which means they've sat where you're sitting and they can hear a bluff.
Procedural strictness has real stakes. A comparative study of three simulation formats (a short in-class Security Council exercise, a regional conference with multiple committees, and year-long preparation for a national conference) found that only simulations with full scope produced the full intended mix of factual UN knowledge, procedural understanding and transferable skills, according to the IDOS-hosted study of simulation learning effects. A chair's rulings are the mechanism that turns procedure into knowledge, or skips it entirely.
Worked example: you want a moderated caucus on water access. A loose chair accepts "a moderated caucus" and you lose the topic to whoever speaks first. A precise chair asks for total time, speaking time and topic, then rules. Learn the three-part form and you own the ten seconds before that ruling.
This week, read how to raise motions in Model UN and write three motions in the exact wording your conference's rules require.
3. Crisis Director
In a crisis committee the agenda isn't fixed, and the person feeding the room new problems is the crisis director. That seat runs an unfolding scenario, usually historical, sometimes invented, and pushes updates at intervals you can't predict. Directors assign individual characters or factions rather than countries, then react to what delegates do with them.
The backroom runs on notes
Behind the committee sits crisis staff working from a documented plan: a timeline of scheduled injections, branch points where the story splits depending on directives, and constraints designed to stop delegates solving everything in the first hour. Staff read your notes between sessions and write responses that night. Vague notes get vague answers, which is the most common way a promising crisis arc dies.
What the seat trains is decision speed under incomplete information, with consequences. That's closer to real crisis diplomacy than any staged debate.
Directives that survive review:
- Name the resources. Personnel, budget, timeline, legal authority. A directive without them is a wish.
- Pick one objective per note. Bundled plans come back partially granted.
- Use backroom channels for coordination you don't want minuted, then announce the result as a joint position.
- Respond inside the session. A late note gets answered after the update that made it irrelevant.
This week, open the Model UN crisis committee guide and write a single directive with resources and a 48-hour timeline attached.
4. Rapporteur
The rapporteur decides what the committee remembers. Depending on the conference it's a staff role tracking resolutions and votes, or a delegate role handed to an assistant in the room. Either way the work is identical: a running record of motions, amendments, speakers and vote counts, summarized into something a reader can follow without having been there.
Why the record matters more than delegates think
Your amendment exists in the committee's memory only if it reaches that log. Submit it verbally in a crowded unmoderated caucus and the rapporteur may never catch it, which means it never happened. The habit is unglamorous: hand amendments to the dais in writing, spell sponsor names correctly, and confirm the count before the vote closes.
Procedural knowledge is the durable part of the exercise. Research on UN simulations found that factual knowledge and understanding of UN working methods improved more reliably than higher-order performance such as leading debates, writing speeches or presenting confidently, according to the study available through ERIC. The rapporteur's log is where working methods become visible.
This week, keep a one-page mock log of a single session, timestamps included, and test whether a stranger could reconstruct the vote from it alone.
5. Head Delegate (Lead Delegate)
The head delegate is a delegate with a second job: making fifteen people behave like one delegation. That means assigning countries and committees, setting a research timeline, mentoring first-timers, handling registration and travel, and being the person a coach or a conference secretariat calls when something breaks.
Structure beats enthusiasm
A 2023 experimental study of 42 undergraduate International Relations students in Colombia found that integrating Model United Nations simulations into instruction significantly improved students' understanding, critical-thinking development and academic learning outcomes, as reported in Cogent Education. The sample is small and tied to one institution, so treat it as evidence of a positive instructional effect rather than a fixed effect size. The operational lesson survives anyway: checkpoints teach, pep talks don't.
For a head delegate that means a calendar with owners, not a group chat with good intentions.
- Six weeks out: country research complete, three key priorities written per delegate.
- Three weeks out: position papers drafted and peer-reviewed by someone outside the committee.
- One week out: two mock sessions with real procedure and a timer.
- Each morning at conference: fifteen minutes to align talking points across committees.
Worked example: a team of twelve spread over four committees usually loses marks because two delegates have no fallback clause and freeze when their first proposal fails. Pair each delegate with a partner in a neighbouring committee who reads the paper and names its weakest clause.
This week, build the shared folder for background guides, position papers and draft resolutions, and put the first mock session in the calendar with a named chair.
6. Press Corps Journalist
Press corps sits outside the rules of procedure and inside the story. You attend sessions, interview delegates and chairs, and produce news pieces, interviews, opinion and a daily update, usually for a conference newspaper or news service. Large events need it: the Discover Model United Nations Conference expected 1,500 delegates for its 2023 online event, according to the MyMUN conference listing.
Print deadlines shape the story
The press team answers to an editor with a word count and a print time, often overnight. That constraint changes what gets covered. A resolution that passes at 9pm with no quotable sponsor gets a paragraph. A delegate who gives one clean, accurate sentence at 4pm gets the headline, and the headline is what the next committee reads before its second session.
Delegates should treat the press as an instrument, not an audience. Bring them the clause you want noticed, with the vote count attached.
That dynamic has analytical depth. A story that frames an arms build-up without explaining the security dilemma reads as alarmism, while one that names the mechanism reads as analysis. The journalist who understands the concept writes the second version.
Filing checklist:
- Stay for the whole session before writing, because the vote usually reverses the debate.
- Interview two delegates with opposing positions and quote both.
- Verify resolution numbers, vote counts and country names with the rapporteur before publication.
- Lead with the outcome, not the atmosphere, in the first two sentences.
This week, write a 150-word news brief on a real UN vote with a lead paragraph that states the outcome in the first line.
7. Secretariat Member (Secretary-General and Under-Secretary-General)
The secretariat is the seat that decides whether the conference functions. The Secretary-General oversees the whole event, and Under-Secretaries-General run departments: committees, crisis, press, logistics, delegate affairs. It mirrors the UN Secretariat, which supports member states and coordinates the organization's work across its principal organs.
The operational season is wider than any single delegate sees. MyMUN recorded 63 Model UN conferences in August 2023, including 26 in-person events across 14 countries and 37 online, per MyMUN's conference records. Every one of those needed a ruleset, a staffing chart and someone answering messages at midnight.
Who runs what
Secretariat members write the handbook delegates skim, recruit and brief chairs, set the awards criteria and resolve the disputes nobody else can. Their decisions reach a delegate indirectly: the word limit on a position paper, whether crisis committees allow backroom notes, how strictly a plagiarism check runs.
What good secretariat work looks like:
- Written guidelines for chairs, crisis staff and volunteers, distributed before training.
- A single channel per department, so a chair with a procedural question isn't messaging five people.
- Regular staff check-ins in the final week, when small problems compound fastest.
- Decision logs, so next year's team understands why a rule exists.
For delegates, the practical takeaway is that the handbook is a primary source. The delegate who reads the rules of procedure, the awards criteria and the committee staffing list knows the shape of the weekend before anyone else arrives.
This week, download your conference handbook and write one sentence on who runs each of your committee's functions.
How the 7 Model UN positions compare
Item | Who they represent | Speaks in debate? | Main skill built | Best for |
Delegate (Country Representative) | An assigned country, bloc, or other entity | Yes | Research, public speaking, and negotiation | Hands-on diplomacy and committee participation |
Chair (Presiding Officer) | The committee, impartially | No; guides debate | Procedure and fair leadership | Students who enjoy facilitating discussion |
Crisis Director | The crisis scenario and its staff | No; directs the simulation | Strategic planning and adaptability | Students interested in fast-paced simulations |
Rapporteur | The committee's official record | Limited; mainly documents proceedings | Accurate note-taking and summarizing | Students interested in policy analysis or documentation |
Head Delegate (Lead Delegate) | Their school or delegation | Depends on whether they also serve as a delegate | Team leadership and coordination | Students who enjoy mentoring and organizing teams |
Press Corps Journalist | The conference press team | No; observes and reports | Journalism and fact-checking | Students interested in writing and media |
Secretariat Member (Secretary-General and Under-Secretary-General) | The conference leadership team | No; manages conference operations | Large-scale leadership and project management | Students interested in organizing conferences |
Pick Your Seat and Start Preparing Today
Choose by temperament, then test it. If you like arguing from evidence and being held to a national position, take the delegate seat. If you like order and fairness, chair a practice session for juniors. If you like improvisation under pressure, sign up for a crisis committee. If you like precision, ask to rapporteur a small committee. If you organize people naturally, run your school's delegation. If you write fast and accurately, join the press corps. If you like building systems, apply to a secretariat.
Every one of those seats is judged on a document. Chairs are judged on rulings and a debrief. Rapporteurs are judged on a log. Press is judged on a filed story. Delegates are judged on a position paper and a resolution. The document is the job, which is why the fastest way to improve is to produce one this week rather than read another guide.
- Delegate: a position paper outline with three priorities and two named allies.
- Chair: a one-page note on how you'd rule on three contested motions.
- Crisis director: one directive with resources and a timeline.
- Rapporteur: a one-session mock log.
- Head delegate: a research calendar with owners and dates.
- Press: a 150-word brief with a lead paragraph.
- Secretariat: a staffing chart with named responsibilities.
If you want a faster first draft, Model Diplomat's position paper generator produces a section-by-section outline with word budgets and a sourced draft for your chosen country and committee, and the speech generator plans a timed opening, GSL or moderated caucus speech with a sourced draft behind it. Both beat staring at a blank page the night before committee.
Pick one seat, pick one document, and finish it before the week ends. Then read it back and ask what a chair would score.
Model Diplomat is built for exactly the preparation work these seven seats demand: sourced country positions, a position paper generator that outlines by section with word budgets, and a speech generator that times an opening or moderated caucus speech. A free account includes 375 credits on day one plus 75 daily, with all courses and committee tools included. Start your prep at Model Diplomat.
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