Position Paper

** The deadline to submit the position papers has changed! New deadline set on 25th of February!

In preparation for the MUN , it will be required for all delegates to submit a position paper on the topic that they will be debating. A position paper is a brief statement of the perspective of the country you are representing in regards to the topic in your committee. The main purpose of the position paper is to establish a country’s foreign policy on a certain topic. Therefore, the bulk of the paper should be based on the research that each delegate will have done on that topic. There are, however, a few essential technical parts of a position paper. Before each topic, there should be four lines of information formatted in the following manner: 

 Committee: 

 Topic: 

 Country: 

 Delegate Name: 

The rest of the text will be the information on your country’s foreign policy; that being said, the task of condensing a nation’s official position on any topic into a brief document can be quite daunting. For that reason, delegates must be concise and careful when selecting information to include. Here are a few suggestions of what might be included: 

- The names of any international agreements relevant to the topic signed by your nation. Conversely, if your nation has not signed an important agreement for specific reasons, the rationale for this might also be included. 

- This will immediately allow countries to determine if your foreign policies are congruent based on their status in regards to the agreement. 

- The details of any topic-oriented international organisations of which your country is a member– another easy way to determine alliances. 

- A brief description of how the problem addressed within the topic has affected your nation. 

- A brief description of any programmes or actions taken by your nation’s government and/or government-approved NGOs and IGOs in regards to the problem. 

- How your country would like to see the questions posed by the topic (especially those found within the committee guide) addressed in a resolution. 

The most important thing to remember is to be concise and accurate – there’s nothing worse than another delegate questioning the accuracy of your own foreign policy! 

It is prefered to separate your position paper in two parts. In the first one you are going to analyze the situation in general and in the second part you are going to state your counties policy.

The position paper should not exceed one page and a half. 

Here is a helpful sample:

Committee: 3^rd Committee of the General Assembly (SOCHUM)

Topic Area A: The right to religion and religious manifestation

Country: Venezuela

Delegate Name: Tasos Kalergis

            The right to religion and religious manifestation is a subsection of the freedom of religion. This right is protected by a great number of treaties of the United Nations and by the majority of the national constitutions. However, there is a great deal of issues that the international community has to deal with, such as the restrictions of the freedom to manifest a religion, under some circumstances the religious education, proselytism and the religious discrimination. The problem is more extensive in the countries where religion plays an important role in the legal system and since many cases of violations of basic human rights have been noticed for religious practices. Furthermore, there are other nations that have dealt with the problem of the religious symbols in public spaces. The United Nations are constantly trying to eliminate these problems. In the last session of the General Assembly of the United Nations “freedom of religion or belief” was among the other topics of the agenda as it appears more and more to be of vital importance.

            Venezuela is a nation which respects the right to religion and religious manifestation. This is proved by the article 59 of its Constitution which begins with the phrase “The State guarantees the freedom of cult and religion”. The only restriction in this is that the manifestation of one religion must not violate public morality, decency and public order. In spite of the fact that the 95% of the citizens of Venezuela are Catholic Christians, Venezuela’s Government tries to limit the influence of Catholic Church in State in order to eliminate any kind of discriminations between Christians and other religious groups and religious minorities. However, Venezuela’s government still funds some of the Catholic Church’s social programs for the needs of its citizens. As for the religious education, as it is referred in our constitution, Venezuela leaves the religious education to the parents of a child and not to the public schools, as the official opinion of the country declares that the religious education is a personal matter. Religious education in public schools can be considered as proselytism since children have not created their critical thought in a satisfied way and they can be influenced significantly by the public school. We firmly believe that there is much more to offer in the sector of education so as to promote equality and non-discrimination. As for the religious symbols in public spaces, Venezuela’s government permits them as far as they are not dangerous for the public order.

Taking all these important issues into account, Venezuela strongly believes that the international community plays and has to play a significant role in this aspect. To begin with, the right to religion binds legally all nations given the fact that the UNHR, which has been adopted by the General Assembly, has a customary character and as such binds legally all nations to respect it. As a result, the United Nations should strongly condemn not only the intolerance and discrimination based on religion, but also the proselytism, and should promote religious equality. Moreover, we urge all nations to promote that kind of legislation which is free of every kind of discrimination based on religious beliefs. Besides, it is essential for each and every state to deal with every case of religious practice which violates the human rights and disturbs the international order. Finally, we highly encourage the whole international community to cooperate so as to avoid phenomena of human rights abuses by organizing campaigns worldwide to raise public awareness and by stressing out in the different “fora” the significance of the protection of the right to religion and religious manifestation.