How to Write a Model UN Clause That Survives Voting

Where this fits

If you want to see a whole draft annotated line by line, read How to Write a Model UN Resolution first. If you need the full menu of opening phrases, keep the preambulatory and operative clause phrase bank open in another tab. This post sits between the two. It assumes you know what a resolution looks like and asks a narrower question: what makes one clause good enough to survive a hostile room?

The grammar of a Model UN clause

A resolution is one long sentence with the committee as its subject, and every clause is a fragment of that sentence. The grammar below follows the UN's own editorial manual for resolutions, which is what most Model UN handbooks are adapted from.

Read your clause aloud after "The General Assembly," as a test. "The General Assembly, recalling the Paris Agreement" and "The General Assembly requests the Secretary-General to report" both parse. If your clause does not read as a grammatical continuation of that subject, the chair will send it back.

The formula for a strong operative clause

Weak operatives almost always fail the same way: they have a verb and a wish, and nothing else. A strong operative answers seven questions. You will not need every part in every clause, but you should decide on purpose which ones you are leaving out. Here is one clause on cholera outbreaks, built piece by piece.

Assembled, that becomes one clause a delegate can defend line by line:

Two choices in there are worth copying. The mechanism is a body that already exists, so nobody can stand up and ask who runs it. And the verb is Invites rather than Requests: in UN practice the General Assembly tends to request things of the Secretary-General and its own subsidiary bodies, and to invite specialized agencies such as WHO, which answer to their own governing bodies. Chairs who know this notice it.

Sub-clauses: breaking one action into parts

Once a clause carries more than two of the seven parts, split the components into sub-clauses. The UN editorial manual sets the numbering: first-level sub-clauses take lower-case letters in parentheses, and second-level ones take lower-case roman numerals. Each sub-clause ends with a comma or semicolon depending on your conference style, and the numbered clause still ends with a semicolon.

The rule of thumb: one numbered clause equals one action, and each sub-clause holds one component of it. Sub-clauses also make your draft easier to amend in your favor. A rival can strike (c) without touching (a) and (b), which is far better than losing the whole clause.

Six weak Model UN clauses, rewritten

Each pair below is the kind of clause chairs see in every first working paper, next to a version that would hold up in debate. The topics are real; the clauses are teaching examples, not quotations from UN documents.

Verbs reserved for the Security Council

The UN Charter gives the two bodies different powers. Under Articles 10 to 14, the General Assembly may discuss questions and make recommendations. Under Article 25, Member States agree to accept and carry out the decisions of the Security Council. Model UN turns that difference into a drafting convention: General Assembly committees recommend, request, urge, and invite, while Demands, Condemns, Authorizes, and binding uses of Decides belong to the Council.

Two caveats keep you accurate. First, the real General Assembly does use Decidesabout its own business: scheduling a session, adopting a budget, keeping an item on its agenda. "Decidesto remain seized of the matter" is a normal closer for that reason. Second, the real Assembly has occasionally used stronger language, including Demands in a 2022 emergency special session resolution on Ukraine, but those words carried no binding force there. Most Model UN chairs will still ask you to replace them in a GA draft, so the safe rule is simple: in a General Assembly committee, never use a verb that implies anyone is obliged to comply.

In a Security Council simulation, the opposite problem appears. Delegates who have only written GA drafts reach for Encourages when the Council could simply decide. If your committee has the power to bind, use it, and remember that a single permanent member can veto the whole text. Our rules of procedure guide covers how voting works in each body.

Wording that respects sovereignty

Article 2(7) of the Charter keeps the UN out of matters essentially within a state's domestic jurisdiction, and delegates use it as a shield against any clause that tells a government how to run its country. You lose fewer votes if your wording concedes that point up front. A few phrases do most of the work:

• "Encourages Member States to" instead of telling them what they will do. The action stays; the obligation goes.
• "in accordance with national legislation" for anything touching criminal law, elections, or education systems.
• "upon the request of the State concerned" for any assistance, monitoring, or deployment on a country's territory.
• "that have not yet done so" when calling for ratification, which avoids implying that states already in the treaty are failing.

Do not overdo it. A clause qualified with "where appropriate, as feasible, and in accordance with national priorities" lets every state do nothing and still claim compliance. One qualifier per clause is usually enough.

How clauses get amended, and how to survive it

Once a draft is introduced, its operative clauses are open to change. At most US-style conferences, a friendly amendment is one every sponsor agrees to; it goes in without a vote. An unfriendly amendment is one the sponsors reject; it needs a set number of signatures, is debated, and is voted on before the draft itself. Delegates can also move to divide the question, which puts selected clauses to a separate vote. Thresholds and names vary by conference, so check the handbook.

Here is how that plays out on the cholera clause above. A delegation worried about cost proposes changing "within twenty-four months" to "as resources permit". If the sponsors accept, it goes in as a friendly amendment and the clause loses its deadline. If they refuse, the proposer collects signatures and the room votes. A better move for the sponsors is a counter-offer: "within thirty-six months, subject to the availability of voluntary contributions". The deadline survives, the cost concern is answered, and the objecting delegation now has its name on the text.

Clauses that come through this process intact tend to share a few habits:

• They carry one action. A clause with a single action can only be attacked on one point. A mega-clause gives opponents a reason to divide it or vote it down.
• They answer the obvious objection in the text. If someone will ask who pays, the funding line is already there. If someone will raise sovereignty, the consent language is already there.
• They leave something to concede. A timeline of eighteen months that you would accept at twenty-four is a cheap friendly amendment to hand a wavering delegation, and it moves them onto your side.
• They do not depend on each other. If clause 6 only makes sense because of clause 2, striking clause 2 kills both. Where you must cross-reference, name the mechanism instead of only the number.

The ideas in your clauses should already exist in your position paper, so drafting in committee becomes a formatting job. The resolution template gives you the page layout to drop them into.

Common Model UN clause mistakes

• Wrong punctuation. A period at the end of clause 3, or commas after operatives. Chairs fix it, but it signals a first-time drafter.
• Non-UN verbs. Bans, Creates, Forces, Wants. Pick from the phrase bank.
• Actions in the preamble. "Believingthat a fund should be created" is a proposal nobody can amend. Move it to an operative.
• Invented numbers. A budget or statistic you cannot source will be challenged in the first moderated caucus, and you will have no answer.
• New bodies for everything. A new commission per clause reads as unrealistic. Use existing agencies unless there is a real gap.
• Undefined terms. "Fake news", "bad actors", "developed countries" with no criteria. Opponents will define them for you, badly.

Clause writing improves fastest with someone marking up your drafts against a real committee. If you want that before your next conference, our programs include live drafting sessions, and a free trial class is the easiest way to start.