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RESEARCH GUIDEIntroduction: How to use the Research Guide This Research Guide is intended to help you, the delegates of JPHMUN, find all of the information that you need in order to get the most out of your Model United Nations experience. Since you have probably never done anything like this before, you may be thinking that you do not even know what you are looking for. This guide is also designed to help you figure out what research you need. It is laid out to take you through the research process step by step, so you will probably find it most useful if you start from the beginning and work towards the end. Some parts of the research, however, go hand in hand, so it is a good idea to read through the whole guide once at the beginning of your preparation. This will help you to understand how each section relates to the others. We are assuming that most of your research will be done using the internet, since this is the research tool that is most universally available to JPHMUN delegates. As such, the Research Guide is written with internet research specifically in mind. While the internet can be a useful research tool, however, the huge amount of information it makes available, and the varying quality of sources, means that it can also make research very inefficient. This Research Guide is intended to increase the efficiency for JPHMUN delegates by helping you to find high quality information quickly. Remember that if you run into trouble with any aspect of your preparation, you can always write to the Secretariat for advice. There are three basic types of knowledge that you will need in order to be an effective diplomat at JPHMUN. These are: 1) Knowledge about the topic being debated by your committee. 2) Knowledge about your country's positions on issues related to that topic. 3) Knowledge about what has been done about these issues at the UN already. This Research Guide will help you find and understand all three types of information. Remember that no delegate to JPHMUN can know all there is to know about these things. The better prepared you are, however, the more you will get out of your JPHMUN experience. Finding Reliable Sources It is important that JPHMUN delegates be able to distinguish, at least to some degree, between reliable and unreliable sources of information. This is probably more of a problem with internet research than with other methods of research, because there are no quality control mechanisms in place to ensure that information placed on the web is reliable. In other words, anybody can put information on the web, and it is sometimes difficult to tell where the information is coming from and if it can be trusted. Here are some basic guidelines to follow when doing research on your agenda item on the web: 1) Look at the address of the site. In most cases the address of a web site will contain an indicator of the type of site it is, such as ".org", ".edu", “.ca”, or ".com". Below is some information on what they mean: .org - Indicates an "organization". Many reputable organizations, such as Amnesty International or United Nations itself will fall under this category. This doesn't mean that you can trust every .org site, but rather that many good sites for research are .org sites (see tip #2 below). .edu - Indicates an educational institution. In most cases, especially if it is a well known college or university (Canadian schools can be identified by the indicator .ca), the information on these sites is reliable. .com - Indicates a commercial site. With the exception of well-known news or journalistic sites, these sites should be avoided when doing research. .ca - Indicates a Canadian site. As with the .com sites it is difficult to know their reliability. Unless recommended by a reputable source, you should avoid using these sites for research. 2) A good rule of thumb when using .org sites is that if you have not heard of the organization, you probably should not use the information. In some cases, however, an organization you are not familiar with may be recommended by or linked to the site of a very reputable organization. For example, the UN site contains many such links. In such cases you can usually consider the information to be trustworthy. 3) If you find useful information on a site that you do not know if you can trust, this doesn't mean that the information is useless. You can always search for the same information on a more reliable site in order to verify it. Researching Your Country In order to represent your assigned country well, you will need to be familiar with your country's foreign policy regarding the topic being debated in your committee. Foreign policy is what diplomats call a country's official position on international issues, and it is found in statements made by representatives of that country on these issues. Before you can really understand your country's foreign policy, however, you need to know certain things about your country. This section will help you to find the background information that you will need in order to understand your foreign policy. The next section will help you to discover what that foreign policy is. Background Information The first thing to understand about foreign policy positions is that they are more than just opinions about issues. Decisions made by the international community can have serious effects, both positive and negative, for individual states and their citizens. For this reason, countries usually try to influence debates at the UN in directions that they see as being good for them or their citizens. Decisions of the international community affect states and their citizens in many ways. They could have political, economic, or security implications, or affect such things as the practice of religion or standards of human rights. The history of your country, and the circumstances in which it exists now, have a lot to do with its opinion about such issues. This means that the better you know your country, the more you will understand its foreign policy. One very reputable Model United Nations organization has suggested that delegates should know about the political structure, economic condition, religion(s), history, and culture of the state they represent.1 You should look for some basic information on these five aspects of your country as soon as you get your country assignment. Below are addresses for a couple of web-sites that should contain the kind of information you need: The World Factbook - produced by the CIA https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/ After getting some basic information about your country, you may be interested in learning more detailed information about some aspect of your country that you think is particularly relevant to your foreign policy. Chances are you can find what you are looking for in the excellent Country Studies produced by the U.S. Library of Congress. They are quite long, but they have good indexes so you should easily be able to find what you are looking for. So far about 100 of them have been placed online at lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/ . Groupings In the UN there are groups of countries that tend to agree with each other more than they agree with other countries. For this reason, knowing about your country's associations with other countries can be very helpful in understanding your foreign policy. There are two basic types of groupings that you should be concerned with: 1) regional groupings; and 2) political groupings. In the General Assembly, five informal regional groupings have emerged over the years. They are the African States, the Asian States, the Eastern European States, the Latin American and Caribbean States, and the Western European and other States. Although these groupings are based primarily on geography, they can be politically significant, since countries in a region often face common challenges and have some common interests. While regional groupings provide a good basis for working toward common goals, however, political groupings are often more important in determining foreign policy. In other words, a country is likely to feel more loyalty to a group of countries that it chooses to be associated with than to a group of countries which happen to be located close to it. Some of the political groupings which tend to be significant at the UN are the European Union (EU), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the Nordic Countries, the Non-Alligned Movement (NAM - sometimes also referred to as the Group of 77 Non-Alligned Countries), the Association of South East Asian Nations, the Organization of Islamic Countries (OIC), and the Arab League. As you can see from these examples, there is often some correspondence between political and regional groupings. For example, the countries of the European Union are grouped both politically and geographically. Regional or political groups will sometimes designate one country to make a statement on their behalf on a particular issue. When this is the case, it is noted in the UN Press Releases that they are "speaking for" that group. This will be important to remember when you are looking for statements of your foreign policy on an issue. In some cases, the relationship between your country and another single country can be an important influence on foreign policy as well. There are three situations in particular where this is the case: 1) when two states are major trading partners; 2) when there is an agreement of "mutual defense" in place between two states, or one state has given guarantees of security to another; and 3) in the case of developing countries, when one state is a major donor of aid to the another. In such cases there is often more pressure for one state to agree with the other on certain issues. The existence of these conditions does not mean that these states will always agree, but these relationships are often a major consideration when foreign policy decisions are being made. 1. Reincke, Mary Beth, Nathan Walz, and Matthew Strickler, Delegate Preparation Manual: 2000 National Model United Nations Conference, The National Collegiate Conference Association, Inc., 1999, p. 10. Researching Your Foreign Policy After having acquired the background knowledge about your assigned country described in the previous section, you should be better able to understand your country's foreign policy on the issue to be debated by your committee. Now all you have to do is find it! We recommend two basic approaches - writing to diplomatic representatives of your assigned country (must be done well in advance) and research on the World Wide Web. The United Nations Association in Canada provides some very useful guidelines and information on writing to your country's Permanent Mission to the UN or its embassy in Canada in its section on Model UN's. Access the "Model UNs" section from their homepage at www.unac.org and then select "About Your Country's Position". Below are some guidelines for internet research on foreign policy. Sites Maintained By Your Assigned Country If your country's permanent mission to the U.N. (New York) maintains a web-site, this is a good place to start. You can find these by selecting "UN Member States" on the main page of the UN web-site at www.un.org. Many countries also have web-sites maintained by their foreign ministries or central government. These are also good sources of information about foreign policy, and will sometimes have more extensive information than the UN mission web-sites. They can be a bit tricky to find, but luckily, in most cases, other people have already done most of the work for you by compiling on-line lists of links to these sites. A good place to start is with the list prepared by the Diplomatic Studies Programme at the University of Leicester at http://www.le.ac.uk/politics/. They list only foreign ministries with significant web-sites. They also recommend another more extensive list, prepared by Gunnar Anzinger, for finding other government sites which they don't list. His site is called Governments online, and you can find it at www.gksoft.com/govt. Information Available on the UN Site Another important source of information about your country's foreign policy is statements made by its representatives (or by representatives of other countries speaking on their behalf) in committees, the Security Council, or general debate of the General Assembly. There are two basic methods of finding this type of information. The first is to search the Press Releases announcing the passing of Resolutions on issues related to your agenda item. These Press Releases will normally contain statements from several countries about the Resolution. This type of search is made easier by the fact that all Resolutions are dated, and Press Releases of both the Security Council and the General Assembly are searchable by date. Start with the most recent Resolutions and work backwards. See the section of this guide called Your Issue at the UN for more detailed advice on how to do this type of Research. The Second way to find statements by your country at the UN is to do a more general search of the UN Web Site using the search engine provided there. This type of search is less precise, but it will allow you to find statements from the "general debate" (the debate that occurs at the beginning of each session of the General Assembly before they begin considering specific agenda items) that you will not find using the type of search described above. You can do this type of search by putting the name of your country in the same search field with key words from your agenda item (as above, see the Your Issue at the UN section). As you are likely to get many hits, it is worth taking a look at the Advanced Searching Tips provided so that you can modify your searches and make your research time more efficient. Researching Your Agenda Item Because each agenda item requires different research, we ca not be as specific here in our advice on where to find what you need. We can, however, give you several helpful tips that will cut down on your research time and help you to find better quality material. As well, the United Nations Association in Canada (UNAC) is in the process of putting together an extensive network of resources for Model UN participants on common Model UN issues. We highly recommend that participants of JPHMUN check out this section of their web site. As it continues to grow it will become a very good source of information for Model UN delegates. To find it, go to the "Model UNs" section on their homepage at www.unac.org and then select "About Your Issue". Where to Begin The best place to begin researching your topic is with the Background Paper provided by the JPHMUN Secretariat. This document should do three things for you: 1) give you a better understanding of the issues involved with your agenda item; 2) provide a context for the debate that will take place at JPHMUN; and 3) recommend some good places to look for information on your particular agenda item. Though the Background Paper is meant to be only a starting point for your learning about your topic, reading it carefully will be a big step twoard being able to actively participate in the debate at JPHMUN. Below is some general advice on how to find additional information on your agenda item. What Should You Be Looking For? When doing research to supplement the information in the Background Paper, you should be looking for a couple of different types of information: 1) Information that gives you a better understanding of the issues involved; and 2) Information on recent events or developments that are relevant to these issues. Where Can You Find It?
How to “Read” These Sources One might think that you would read these sources of information the same way that you would normally read a newspaper or an article in a magazine. When you are preparing for a Model United Nations, however, this is not really the case. First of all, you should try to evaluate what you read not from your own perspective, but from that of the country you represent. Secondly, because you are reading the material for a specific purpose, you should try to read it with certain questions in mind. The National Model United Nations (NMUN), a large university level event held in New York gives its delegates five questions to keep in mind when researching any particular agenda item.1 In paraphrased form, they are: 1. What important questions are being raised in the debate about your topic? 2. From your country's perspective, why are these issues important? 3. What are the specific reasons why you think these issues are still unresolved? 4. Are there countries that share your country's view of these issues? 5. What countries are opposed to your country's view of these issues? Reading with these questions in mind will help you to make the most of the sources of information you find. 1 Reincke, Mary Beth, Nathan Walz, and Matthew Strickler, Delegate Preparation Manual: 2000 National Model United Nations Conference, The National Collegiate Conference Association, Inc., 1999, p. 10.
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