How to chair a Model UN committee: a first-session script and 12 scenario cards

Chairing starts weeks before the first session: you prepare, run every session, keep debate fair and pick the awards at the end.

Expect four stages:

• Before the conference. Learn the rules, write or edit the background guide with your co-chair and read the position papers.
• In each session. Open with roll call, run the speakers' list and caucuses, rule on points and motions, and take the votes, step by step.
• Between speeches. Give every delegation a fair turn, approve drafts in the live document editor and keep order in the room.
• At the end. Pick the awards against the criteria, and give each delegate a strength and a next step.

Through all of it you stay neutral and do not vote, as a chair at the UN does. Judge how well a delegate argues, not whether you agree.

Working with your co-chair

Split the work with your co-chair before day one, even with only two of you at the front. One of you speaks to the room, calls speakers and rules on points and motions. The other keeps the time and the speakers' order, notes what each delegate does, and checks drafts, amendments and notes.

Agree too how strict you will be and how you pick speakers. Start strict, and relax as the committee settles in. Ask your secretariat who does what, because the seats on the dais go by different names at each conference.

Learn your conference's rules and your topic well, and plan your time back from the final vote.

• Your conference's rules. Read them first, and answer four questions on your script. Which motions are allowed, and in what order? What are the majorities? Can a delegate appeal your ruling? What ends debate? Never change a rule mid-session without telling the room.
• The background guide. Some conferences call it a study guide, or a research report at THIMUN-style ones. If you write it, cover the key terms, the problem, the main countries and groups and past UN action. End with the questions a resolution should answer, and your sources.
• Position papers. Tell each delegate that their position paper arrived. Read it for a clear position, sourced facts and workable solutions, using your conference's criteria if it publishes them. Note one point for feedback.
• Time. Plan back from the last session. Put the deadlines for drafts and amendments in the schedule, and leave time to vote on every draft.
• A rehearsal. Read the script aloud once with your co-chair.
• Your kit. Your committee in MUN Command, the script and scenario cards on your laptop, and phone numbers for the secretariat and the safeguarding lead.

Use chairing software, ideally MUN Command: it runs the speakers' list, motions, votes and notes, so you can watch the room.

Use chairing software if you can. It keeps the speakers' list, the clock, the motions and the votes for you, so your eyes stay on the delegates. The best tool for it is MUN Command, built for Model UN chairs, delegates and organizers.

Many conferences run MUN Command for every committee, so you get an invite from the organizer before the first session. If yours does not, you can still set up your own committee in it. What it does for you:

• Speakers' list and timers. Delegates join the speakers' list from their seats, the timer runs on screen, and you switch between modes of debate with one tap.
• Motions. Delegates submit motions from their phones, and you decide each one from a queue in real time.
• Roll call and votes. Each takes one tap, and MUN Command counts the result.
• Notes. The committee chat replaces paper notes, between delegates and with the dais.
• Live document editing. Delegates write drafts together in MUN Command, with no Google Docs or shared folders, and send each one to you for approval.
• Statistics and ratings. See who spoke, when and in which caucus, and rate each speech as you go, for fair awards.

Ten steps from the call to order to the final vote, with the words to say at each one.

The script runs the same Second Committee session as the rules guide, with your own names, times and rules. If your conference follows THIMUN rules, switch the script to THIMUN-style.

Use your tracker to give every delegation a fair turn, and leave arguments about facts to the delegates.

When several placards go up, look around the whole room before you choose. Call a delegate who has spoken less, without shutting out those who speak often.

At each break, look for unfair patterns in your tracker or in MUN Command's statistics. Are you calling mostly on one side of the room, on friends or on one gender? During speeches, warn a speaker with a tap of your gavel or pen about ten seconds before the end.

If a delegate says something false about their own country, do not rule on it from the chair. Under most rules a wrong fact is not a point of order, and other delegates can answer it in debate.

First check the fact yourself, because a country's position can change. Then send a note or a chat message: “Could you show the dais your source for Ghana's position at the break?”

Know which points and motions your rules allow, and rule on each one aloud.

Repeat each point to the room, so that everyone knows what you are deciding. Then rule aloud, in one sentence.

When a delegate shows you a ruling was wrong, check the rule first. If they are right, say so in these words and move on:

Approve a draft only once it passes the format and four checks of your own, and run every vote the same way.

If your committee runs on MUN Command, delegates write drafts together in its live document editor, with no Google Docs or shared folders. When a draft comes to you, read and comment on it there, then approve it or ask for a revision. Once introduced, MUN Command numbers it and writes each passed amendment into the text.

Before you approve a draft resolution, check it against the resolution format and your conference's numbers of sponsors and signatories, or co-submitters. Then check four things the format does not cover:

• The topic. Every paragraph deals with the committee's topic.
• The mandate. It asks only for what your committee can do.
• The UN Charter. Nothing in it goes against the Charter.
• Its own words. Nothing is copied, beyond standard wording and cited quotes. Online checkers help, but read it yourself, and have copied text rewritten before you approve.

Apply your conference's rules on plagiarism and AI, not your own. Take any suspicion privately to the secretariat, never in front of the room.

Ask for amendments in writing before debate on them starts, and read each one aloud before its vote.

Before any vote, check that a majority of the members is present, as most rules require. If not, keep debating and ask staff to bring delegates back.

When voting begins, say what the committee is voting on, and allow only points about how the vote runs. Announce the result as in step 10 of the script. If your voting rules allow a roll-call vote, say: “When I call your country, answer yes, no, abstain or pass.”

Go up the steps one at a time, from a look to the secretariat, and pass on any worry about someone's safety at once.

When a delegate breaks the rules or the tone of debate, go up these steps one at a time:

1. 1A look, or a pause while you wait for quiet.
2. 2A reminder to the whole room, without naming anyone.
3. 3A private note or chat message to the delegate.
4. 4A word with them at the break.
5. 5The secretariat, if it goes on, or at once if it is serious.

Never shout at or humiliate a delegate. Answer lateness with the rules, not a punishment. Pass repeated lateness to the secretariat or the delegate's faculty advisor, called the MUN Director at THIMUN-style conferences.

If someone is upset or unwell, the person comes first and the debate second. Let them leave at once, without a point, and send your co-chair or a staff member with them. Then tell the secretariat and their faculty advisor.

Your chair cheat sheet for the moments debate goes wrong: act on the first step at once, and keep your words to one calm line.

Judge every delegate against the criteria, and give each one a strength and a next step.

If your conference gives awards, judge each delegate against its criteria. If it publishes none, judge with a judging rubric that weighs six kinds of evidence, from speeches to drafting.

Volume is not a criterion: a quiet delegate who shaped the draft can rank above the loudest one. If the dais picks the awards, decide them together.

Keep evidence against the criteria in every session. In MUN Command, rate each speech and add a comment as it happens. Before you decide, revisit the full history of the debate: who spoke, when and in which caucus.

At the end, give each delegate one strength and one thing to try next time, in a chat message or in person.

If a delegate disputes an award, listen once, then explain: “We judged every delegate against the conference's criteria. I'm happy to tell you what we noticed in your work.” Do not discuss other delegates or change the result. Send any further complaint to the secretariat.