Crisis committees in Model UN: how they work, with crisis notes and directives

You act in the room and by private note, the backroom turns your moves into the story, and it builds to one big move.

A crisis committee runs on two rooms: the front room you sit in, which acts through directives, and the backroom out of sight. Its crisis staff play the rest of the world and announce what happens next. Between the two, you work with four things:

• Your papers. Directives carry the room's orders, and crisis notes carry your own moves. Communiqués and press releases speak to the world outside.
• Your powers. Your seat sets what you can do alone, through your portfolio powers.
• The updates. The backroom answers what delegates send, so an update is often a clue to what someone did.
• The arc. Small moves early and the big one before the last session: a crisis builds like a story.

Story time often runs faster than real time, so one session can cover weeks. Afraid the pace will lose you? Arrive knowing your character, with your first two crisis notes drafted, and you start ahead of the room.

Some crises add a twist: two rooms on opposing sides in a joint crisis, or a real moment from the past in a historical crisis.

Directives go to the whole room, crisis notes only to the backroom, and communiqués and press releases to the world of the story.

Before you write anything, ask who should see it. The table shows where each paper goes and what it does.

Use a press release only when public opinion matters to your plan, for example to calm a panic, because every rival reads it too. For the tone of a real announcement, read the Security Council's press statements on the UN's meetings coverage site. Where a conference runs a press corps, it reports on your committee too.

Names vary from one conference to the next. You may see every private action called a directive, or crisis notes called personal directives or portfolio requests. Some high school conferences run crisis as a Security Council with no private notes at all, so read your conference's crisis rules first.

A directive is the room's order on one issue: exact about who acts, how much, where, by when and who pays.

A directive works like a short draft resolution. It has sponsors and signatories, skips the preambular paragraphs and usually passes by simple majority. Four rules help it pass:

• One issue per directive. A directive that sends troops and raises a tax loses everyone who opposes either half.
• Exact details. Give numbers, places and deadlines, never “enough” or “soon”.
• Build on what came before. Refer to earlier directives by number, so the backroom sees a plan.
• Every word counts. Vague text lets the backroom choose the outcome, and it picks the best story. Send “the navy” without a destination, and it may sail somewhere you did not mean.

The example below is the directive from the opening scene, set on the invented island of Marenland.

Each paragraph names who acts and what they do, so the backroom has nothing to guess. The first paragraph builds on an earlier directive. The last sets up the next step, because the report gives the cabinet a reason to act again.

Many conferences run MUN Command for every committee. If yours does, sponsors can write a directive together in its live document editor, with no Google Docs or shared folders. Its committee chat replaces paper notes to the chairs, so send crisis notes the way your conference asks.

The two tracks work best together: in public, the Minister of Energy saves the hospitals with Directive 1.3. In a crisis note, the same minister keeps part of the reserve in a depot only the ministry controls. By the third session the cabinet depends on that fuel, so the minister's next directive has the votes it needs.

Write one goal in your character's name, with who, what, where and when, in your conference's format.

A crisis note is where your character chases their own goals, using the powers and contacts of their seat. The backroom reads it, plays whoever you wrote to and answers.

• Follow your conference's format. Many conferences want a letter in character to someone in the story, such as your deputy; others want a plain note to “Crisis”. Either way, make your aim clear in 30 seconds.
• One goal per note, with its steps. A tiny request can get lost in a pile of hundreds, so give the goal, the steps and what happens if a step fails.
• Who, what, where, when, why and how. A note the backroom must guess at gets a vague answer or none.
• Secrecy and a reward. Say how you keep it quiet when it must stay secret, and what the person gets for helping.
• Number your notes. Refer back to earlier ones and their replies: “Following my note 4 and Friday's front page, I need ...”.

The weak note names nobody who can act and asks for nothing specific. The strong one is a letter in character with a time, a place and a price. At a conference that wants plain notes to “Crisis”, the same details still make it work.

Your office sets what you can do without the room; research it, and ask the dais when you are unsure.

A finance minister moves money, an interior minister commands the police and a general commands troops. The backroom has the final say, and many background guides (some conferences call them study guides) list each character's powers.

Research the office as well as the person: biographies, the law that sets out the office's powers and what past holders did in real crises. Note your personal resources too, such as money, family and people who owe you favours. The research guide shows where to look for a character.

If your background guide lists no powers, ask the dais before the conference, and state what you assume in your position paper. In session, when you are unsure a power is yours, ask the dais before you build a plan on it.

In a Security Council crisis

Here the powers belong to the Security Council as a whole, and it acts by resolution. Under Chapter VI of the UN Charter, it calls on the parties to settle peacefully. Under Chapter VII, it can order sanctions and, if those would fall short or have failed, the use of force.

A resolution needs nine of the fifteen votes, and no permanent member may vote against it. A no from China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom or the United States is the veto. If your Council takes notes and a veto blocks it, notes as your own government, such as moving ships, often decide the crisis.

Every reply, refusal and update tells you something, if you read it for its cause.

The crisis staff read every directive and note and decide what happens next. A reply can grant your note, grant part of it or refuse it, and some notes get no reply until an update shows the result.

A refusal tells you something: the move was too big for this point in the story, outside your powers or short of details. Make a smaller move, add the detail, or ask what your character needs first. If the same plan keeps coming back refused, change the plan, not the wording.

Read each update for its cause, because many answer what a delegate sent. A leaked document may answer someone's note. Whoever works out whose note it was knows where the next fight will be.

Gather resources early, test them in the middle and make your big move before the final session.

Many crisis committees build like a story in three acts, so plan your notes in the same shape:

1. 1Early sessions. Gather what you will need later: money, people, information and allies in the room, with small notes the backroom can easily grant.
2. 2The middle. Test your plan on a scale the backroom can accept, such as one deal or one arrest, and learn how it responds.
3. 3The second-to-last session. Make the big move your earlier notes made possible. Many backrooms write the final session themselves, so a move sent in the last half hour may never get a reply.

A delegate who stages a coup in the first hour has nothing to build on and is usually refused. One who spent two days placing allies and money can ask for much more later, and the backroom has reason to say yes.

A JCC splits one story across two or more rooms on opposing sides, so plan for moves you cannot see.

In a joint crisis committee, two or more rooms play opposing sides of one scenario, such as two governments close to war. The crisis staff of all the rooms run one story together, and what the other room does reaches you through updates, often late or incomplete.

So never assume you know what the other side has done. Plan for more than one of their moves, and use notes to learn about the other room. Keep your plans quiet, because a character in your own room may have friends on the other side.

Play from your character's seat on the start date: use only what they could know then, and let the story change.

In a historical crisis you play a real person at a real moment, and the committee may take the story where history did not go. The start date is your line: everything before it is your character's past, and nothing after it has happened yet.

• Know your character's past. Research events up to the start date, and the person's allies, rivals, beliefs and powers. The backroom works from the same history.
• Use only what they could know. Argue from what your character knew that day, not from what historians found out later.
• Let history change. Once the committee acts, the real outcome is no guide. React to each update as your character would, not as the textbook says.
• Speak and act in the period. Use the names and titles of the time, and the tools: your character sends a telegram, not a text message.

The first line uses the ending, so the chairs stop trusting the character. The second uses only what an adviser knew that week, and it gives the backroom a move to answer.

The habits that get notes refused and delegates ignored, from the big move first to banned storylines.

• The big move first. A coup or an assassination in the first session, with nothing built to support it. Build up to it instead.
• Ignoring the front room. Directives shape the story too, and the dais watches how you work with the room.
• Threats with no purpose. A character who threatens everyone ends up with no allies, in the story and in the room.
• Banned storylines. Many conferences ban sexual violence and genocide outright, and some ban torture. Ask the dais before you write anything close to them.

The front room often debates in one long moderated caucus, but procedure still applies. Motions, voting and points work much as in any committee, so keep the list of points and motions close.