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PRE-CONFERENCE LOBBYING

In mid-January, you will be notified of the two resolutions fast-tracked for debate in The General Assembly. At this stage, you will also be sent a list of the email addresses of every delegate in your commission, as well as a list of the Concerning Clauses of their resolutions.

Commissioners then have about a month, until Tuesday 14th February, in which to lobby by email those countries which they feel are likely to be willing to co-sponsor their resolution. The aim is to for countries with similar concerns to form alliances in advance of the commission stage and ‘merge’ their resolutions – in other words, combine two or more resolutions into a single resolution sponsored by two or more countries. See the following paper for details of how to do this.

The more co-sponsors you can obtain for your resolution, the more likely you are to have it accepted for debate in Commissions. It follows that the harder you work at this stage, the more likely you are to be able to lead a debate in Commissions.

No country may co-sponsor more than one resolution. It follows that commissioners who are unable to gain sufficient support for their resolution in the early stages of the lobbying process should eventually make the diplomatic decision to abandon their own unpopular resolution in the interests of co-sponsoring a resolution with similar concerns that has more support.
There are two ways to identify likely delegations for co-sponsoring your resolution:
From your general research, you should already be aware of who your allies are. It follows that these countries are the ones most likely to be willing to co-sponsor you.
You will have the list of Concerning Clauses for all resolutions submitted. Clearly, you should be looking to merge resolutions with any delegations whose Concerning Clause is similar to your own.
By Tuesday 14th February, resolutions which are co-sponsored by at least two countries should be emailed to the Chairman on mun@sultansschool.org for consideration by The Resolutions Committee. Ten is the maximum number of co-sponsors: any resolution with ten co-sponsors should immediately be submitted.

Rules for Email Exchanges

This is the area of the project where things are most likely to go wrong, so please stick to the following rules for email exchanges. Please immediately forward to the chairman any email which you receive which has broken any of these rules.

Please note the format for draft resolutions:
1)
When forwarding your resolution to another delegation, you are strongly advised to paste it into the text of your email, rather than sending it as an attachment. This is to avoid the spread of viruses, and also because some school servers routinely block all attachments.
2)
All emails should be relevant to the project. Please remember this is a professional process and be courteous and polite to all other delegations.
3)
Do not ever email more than five delegations in a single email: target certain delegations at a time. This is firstly to avoid overwhelming delegations with an excessive number of emails, and secondly because in any case many servers will block as SPAM any email sent to more than five people at once.
MERGING RESOLUTIONS

Merging resolutions is a highly strategic process, and those commissioners who show the most advanced diplomatic skills are likely to be the most successful at this stage. Think about the following throughout the merging process.

1) Be realistic. You are only allowed to co-sponsor one resolution so if you are unable to gain any co-sponsors for your resolution during the early stages of the project, you need to make a strategic decision to abandon it in favour of a more popular one. Remember that if you break the rules and co-sponsor more than one submitted resolution, your country will be disallowed as co-sponsor from all those resolutions on which your name appears.

2) Start early. Towards the end of the month for merging resolutions, most commissioners will have already agreed which resolution to co-sponsor. It follows that any commissioner who leaves it too late to start the lobbying process is highly unlikely to be successful in persuading others to co-sponsor their resolution.

3) Identify your most likely allies at the start. You should already know who your country’s main allies are, and you will also have a list of the Concerning Clauses for all resolutions. Target your allies and those countries with similar concerns at a very early stage during the lobbying process.

4) Avoid ‘unauthentic alliances’. This is a polite way of saying, don’t cheat and simply ask your friends from the same school to co-sponsor you! The Resolutions Committee will be on the lookout for resolutions where this appears to have occurred at the expense of proper lobbying and where this is blatant, the resolution in question will be disallowed. This is not to say that you cannot be co-sponsored by delegations from the same school – but this must be done through proper diplomatic negotiation!

5) Edit merged resolutions carefully and stick to the correct length. When merging resolutions, do not simply paste two resolutions together. Any resolution submitted which is longer than one side of A4 in 12 point font will be disallowed, so when negotiating with a co-sponsor with similar concerns, you will need to abandon certain clauses in your own resolution in the interests of including more productive clauses from your co-sponsor.

6) Be willing to compromise in the interests of appearing as a co-sponsor on an accepted resolution. All delegations would like their own original resolution to be accepted; however, a delegation who is unwilling to compromise is highly unlikely to appear as co-sponsor on an accepted resolution. Remember that you have the guaranteed right to speak in your Commission if you appear as a co-sponsor!

7) Stick to the correct format. It is appreciated that this may be difficult when pasting resolutions into the text of emails but ultimately, you should submit to the chairman a resolution in the correct format, or your resolution will not be allowed. At the top of your resolution, state the names of up to ten co-sponsors for your resolution. In place of ‘The General Assembly’, write ‘The Commission for . . .’ In all other respects, the format of merged resolutions should be identical to that of the Draft Resolutions originally submitted.

8) Remember the Selection Criteria which will be used by The Resolutions Committee. Make sure your resolution is not disallowed through unfamiliarity with the selection criteria. For example, if your own draft resolution is very similar to one of the two fast-tracked resolutions, you should immediately abandon it in favour of a resolution with a better chance of being allowed.
EMERGENCY RESOLUTIONS

Exceptionally, during the process of Pre-Conference Lobbing and Merging Resolutions, a Commissioner may seek to introduce an emergency resolution in place of their originally submitted draft resolution. This is to ensure that a topic which is of major international significance at the time of the Conference has the potential to be debated.

The introduction of an Emergency Resolution will only be allowed if the country in question has genuinely experienced a major emergency with international ramifications during the intervening period since their original draft resolution was submitted (eg a major natural disaster, a major influx of refugees, the start of a war).

Very few, if any, delegations will find that their country qualifies for the submission of an Emergency Resolution. Commissioners should always email the Chairman on mun@sultansschool.org to notify him that they intend to introduce an Emergency Resolution and the Chairman will advise them whether the situation they are citing qualifies for the implementation of this rule.

Commissioners seeking to introduce an Emergency Resolution should always try to obtain co-sponsors by email in the usual way. However, The Resolutions Committee also has the discretion to accept an Emergency Resolution with no co-sponsors at all if it was introduced towards the very end of the Pre-Conference Lobbying period (ie, if the emergency only very recently occurred).