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Model UN Opening Speeches: Seven Examples You Can Adapt
The first speech you give in committee is usually your worst one, and not because of nerves. It is because most new delegates write it to sound like a UN speech instead of writing it to do a job. An opening speech has exactly one job: put your country’s position on record and give the right delegates a reason to find you in caucus. Below are seven complete speeches, written for this post, that do that job in seven different situations, each with a note on why it works.
The skeleton every opening speech shares
Strip any good opening speech to the studs and you find the same three parts. The hook is your first one or two sentences, and it has to be an idea, not a greeting: a concrete image, a sharp claim, a question the room has not asked yet. The policy is what your country actually wants, stated specifically enough that someone could disagree with it. If you wrote a real position paper, this part already exists; lift it from the third paragraph of your position paper. The call to action is the errand you hand the room: co-sponsor this, fight over this definition, find us in the first caucus.
Then there is the arithmetic. Committee pace is slower than conversation, around 140 words per minute, and nerves will push you faster, so write to a word budget instead of a stopwatch.
| Speaking time | Word budget | What fits |
|---|---|---|
| 30 seconds | ~70 words | One point and one ask. Moderated caucus territory. |
| 60 seconds | ~140 words | Hook, one clear policy, call to action. The standard GSL opener. |
| 90 seconds | ~210 words | The full skeleton plus one or two pieces of evidence, with room to breathe. |
If you want the fill-in version of this skeleton, the free opening speech planner walks you through hook, policy, and call to action line by line.
Six speeches that do their job
Every speech below is original and written for this article; the committee, topic, and country pairings are realistic, and the few figures cited are either well-known public facts or, in the crisis example, clearly part of the scenario’s fiction. Adapt the structure and the moves, not the sentences. Your chair reads the same websites you do, and a borrowed speech in the wrong country’s mouth is obvious from the dais.
Example 1 · 60 seconds · major power
DISEC, autonomous weapons systems. The delegate of France.
Honorable Chair, fellow delegates. A weapon that chooses its own target answers to no treaty and no chain of command. France finds that prospect unacceptable, and we see no reason to wait for a battlefield tragedy to say so. Our position rests on one principle: a human being must keep meaningful control over any decision to take a life.
France therefore supports a two-track framework. First, a binding prohibition on fully autonomous systems that select and engage targets outside human control. Second, strict accountability rules for the far larger class of weapons that keep an operator in the loop. The obstacle is definitional: no rule can enforce a term this committee has not defined. France will circulate a working definition of meaningful human control today, and we invite every delegation that takes this problem seriously to find us in the first unmoderated caucus. Thank you.
Coach’s note: The hook is one sentence and it is an argument, not a greeting. The policy is specific enough to disagree with (ban one class of weapons, regulate the other), and the call to action gives the room a concrete errand: a definition to fight over and a caucus meeting point.
Example 2 · 60 seconds · small state
SPECPOL, sea-level rise and climate displacement. The delegate of Fiji.
Honorable Chair, fellow delegates. Fiji has already moved entire villages uphill. Not in a projection: in trucks, with the church bell carried out last. Much of this room debates climate displacement as a future risk; for small island states it is a logistics schedule.
Our size is exactly why you should listen to us. Fiji has no bloc to protect and no strategic interest to disguise, and whatever framework this committee writes will be tested on our coastline first. We propose two measures: international guidelines for planned relocation that protect land rights and community consent, and a standing fund that pays to move communities before the water arrives rather than after. The largest delegations here will spend this week talking about 2050. Fiji came to talk about this decade, and we are looking for co-sponsors who understand the difference. Thank you.
Coach’s note: Smallness becomes credibility in a single move: no bloc, no hidden agenda, first to be tested. The detail about the church bell does more work than a statistic would, and the closing line hands potential co-sponsors an identity to join rather than a favor to grant.
Example 3 · 60 seconds · unpopular position
GA Second Committee, accelerating the energy transition. The delegate of Saudi Arabia.
Honorable Chair, fellow delegates. Saudi Arabia is one of the largest energy exporters on Earth, and we plan to be one of the largest energy exporters in a decarbonized world. That is not a contradiction; it is our national strategy, and we will defend it in this room.
Hundreds of millions of people still live without reliable electricity, and no resolution written here will persuade them to stay in the dark. My delegation therefore opposes any text that sets deadlines by naming fuels, and supports every text that measures results in emissions. We back a circular carbon approach: reduce emissions where possible, reuse and recycle carbon where industry can, and remove the remainder through capture and storage. Delegates, apply one test to every proposal this week: how many tonnes does it actually cut? Saudi Arabia will support any draft that passes that test, whoever holds the pen. Thank you.
Coach’s note: An unpopular brief delivered without a flinch. The speech never concedes the room’s framing (no "we understand the concerns"), it substitutes a different test its country can win on, and it ends by offering cooperation on its own terms. Chairs reward in-policy confidence; they can smell visible discomfort from the dais.
Example 4 · 30 seconds · moderated caucus
SOCHUM, access to education for refugee children. The delegate of Canada, in a moderated caucus on funding.
Thank you, Chair. Delegates, one point: refugee education keeps failing because it is funded one year at a time. A displaced child may spend most of her school years in exile, yet her classroom is budgeted through twelve-month emergency appeals. No ministry can hire or train teachers on that horizon. Canada urges this committee to write multi-year education funding into the draft resolution, and we will bring model language to the next unmoderated caucus.
Coach’s note: One point, announced as one point, in the first breath. There is no hook ceremony at caucus pace; the claim is the hook. The last sentence converts a 30-second slot into a caucus meeting, which is the entire reason to speak in a moderated caucus.
Example 5 · 90 seconds · GSL with evidence
World Health Assembly committee, antimicrobial resistance. The delegate of Kenya.
Honorable Chair, fellow delegates. Somewhere in a hospital tonight, a doctor is prescribing a second antibiotic because the first one no longer works, and quietly hoping there will not need to be a third. That is antimicrobial resistance up close: not a headline, a shrinking list of options.
The scale is no longer in dispute. Researchers writing in The Lancet estimated that drug-resistant infections were directly responsible for more than a million deaths in a single recent year. And the World Health Organization has warned repeatedly that the pipeline of genuinely new antibiotics is too thin to replace the drugs we are losing. Rising resistance, thinning arsenal.
Kenya’s position is that this committee must fight both halves of the problem at once. We call for a global surveillance network that funds laboratories where they are scarcest, because an unmonitored infection anywhere becomes an untreatable infection everywhere. We call for stewardship standards that cover human medicine and livestock alike. And we insist that stewardship never become rationing for the poor: in much of the world, people still die for lack of antibiotics, not from excess of them. Kenya is drafting a working paper that pairs stewardship with guaranteed access, and our door is open. Thank you.
Coach’s note: Both pieces of evidence are real, attributed, and rounded ("more than a million"), which is how citation works in a speech: source and scale, no decimal points. The repeated "we call for" is deliberate; at 90 seconds, listeners need signposts. And the access argument turns a defensive position into high ground.
Example 6 · crisis committee · in character
Crisis: the emergency cabinet of a fictional republic facing an armed insurgency in its border provinces. Portfolio: Minister of the Interior. (All figures below are part of the fiction.)
Ministers. While this cabinet spent the morning assigning blame, the overnight dispatches from the border provinces were arriving at my desk, because they arrive at mine first. Let me state what the Interior Ministry brings to this table: the national police, the border gendarmerie, and the only informant network operating inside the insurgency.
Now let me state what I need. I need the emergency policing budget released tonight, and I need road access through the army’s southern checkpoints, which means I need the Minister of Defense to stop treating my gendarmes as rivals. In return, my intelligence flows to those who work with me. The insurgency is not waiting on our procedures, colleagues. Neither am I.
Coach’s note: Everything here is portfolio: what the character controls, what she needs, what she will trade. The final two sentences signal back-room capability without announcing a plan, which invites allies and warns rivals in the same breath. A crisis opening is a market listing, not a policy address.
Example seven: a weak speech, taken apart and rebuilt
This last one is a speech you will hear, in some form, in every beginner committee. Read it once and see how many problems you can spot before the list below.
Example 7a · 60 seconds · the weak version
ECOSOC, youth unemployment. The delegate of Brazil.
Thank you very much, honorable Chair, and good morning to everyone in this room. The delegate of Brazil is truly honored to be here today to discuss the very important topic of youth unemployment. As we all know, youth unemployment is a serious global problem that affects millions of young people in every region of the world. Studies show that 73.4 percent of young people cannot find good jobs. If we do not act now, the consequences for future generations will be very serious. Brazil believes that all nations must come together and cooperate to solve this urgent problem once and for all. Together, we can make a difference. Thank you.
Five failures, in order of appearance:
- Twenty words of ceremony before the first idea. The opening seconds are the only moment the whole room is listening, and this speech spends them on “truly honored.”
- “As we all know,” followed by a restatement of the agenda. Every delegate received the same background guide. Announcing that the topic exists is dead air.
- A fake-precise statistic. 73.4 percent of which young people, where, measured by whom? A chair who cares will wonder; one who does not will simply discount you. Rounded, attributed evidence beats precise, sourceless evidence every time.
- No national position. Swap “Brazil” for any other nameplate and the speech still works, which means it says nothing.
- No call to action. “Come together and cooperate” gives the room nothing to do next. Nobody will look for this delegate in caucus, and caucus is where committees are won.
Example 7b · 60 seconds · the rebuilt version
Same committee, same topic, same country, same length.
Honorable Chair, fellow delegates. A diploma with no first job attached is a promise half kept, and millions of young people are holding that half-kept promise right now. Brazil knows this problem from the inside, and we also know one lever that works: apprenticeship. Under Brazil’s apprenticeship law, larger employers must reserve entry positions for young trainees who split their week between the workplace and the classroom, so the first job arrives with the diploma rather than years after it.
We are not claiming one law solves youth unemployment. We are claiming the school-to-work transition is where this committee will earn or waste its week. Brazil will sponsor a working paper on national school-to-work guarantees, apprenticeship quotas included, and we want to hear from delegations with programs of their own. Find us in the first caucus. Thank you.
Coach’s note: Every sentence now does work. The hook is an image, the policy names a real mechanism the country actually uses, the scope claim is honest, and the ending tells the room exactly where the working paper’s sponsor will be sitting.
Delivery: the three fixes that matter
Delegates worry about a dozen delivery details. In our experience coaching mock committees, three account for nearly all of the difference between a speech that lands and one that evaporates.
Pace. Nerves make you fast, and fast reads as nervous. Committee pace sits around 140 words per minute, noticeably slower than conversation. The drill: record yourself delivering your speech on your phone, count the words, divide by the minutes. If you are over about 160, mark a slash after every sentence in your script, treat each slash as a full breath, and re-record until the number comes down.
Eyes up for the first and last sentence. You do not need eye contact for the whole speech; you need it for the two sentences people remember. The drill: memorize your first and last sentences cold, then deliver just those two to a mirror or a patient sibling ten times, page held at chest height, eyes up the entire way. The page is allowed for everything in between.
Killing filler. “Um” is the sound of a brain searching for its next word; a pause is what a composed brain does instead, and a two-second silence reads as confidence from the back of the room. The drill: have a clubmate tally every um, uh, like, and basically while you speak. Then repeat the speech with one rule: when you feel a filler coming, close your mouth for two seconds instead.
Which speech are you actually giving?
The skeleton flexes depending on when you are speaking and why. Delegates who give an opening-style speech in hour six of debate sound like they walked in late.
| Speech type | Goal | Structure |
|---|---|---|
| Opening GSL speech | Put your position on record and attract a bloc. | Hook, policy, call to action. End by telling the right delegates how to find you. |
| Moderated caucus speech | Win one point in live debate, right now. | Claim in the first sentence, one piece of support, tie it to the motion on the floor. |
| Summation (late-debate GSL) | Frame the vote on a draft resolution. | Name the draft, say what it does in plain words, tell the room how to vote and why. |
Crisis committees play by their own rules: speeches are shorter, in character, and judged partly on what they set up in the back room, as in example six above. Our crisis committee guide covers how the front and back rooms fit together.
Openers and yields: the etiquette part
“Honorable Chair, fellow delegates” is the standard opener at most US conferences, and no delegate has ever lost points for it. You will also hear “esteemed delegates” and “Mister Chairman” or “Madam Chair.” Pick one, say it once, and move on; the opener buys you half a second of attention, not credit.
Yields matter more. At most US-style conferences, if you finish a GSL speech with time remaining, the chair expects you to yield it one of three ways:
- Yield to the chair. The default and the safest. Your speech ends and debate moves on. Say it explicitly: “the delegate yields her time to the chair.”
- Yield to questions. The chair takes points of information from the floor for your remaining time. Strong delegates with strong policy use this to get a second at-bat; do not offer it if you are shaky on your own position.
- Yield to another delegate. A named delegate, usually an ally, speaks for your remaining time. Useful for blocs; note that at most conferences yielded time cannot be yielded again.
Yields exist in the General Speakers List, not in moderated caucuses, and THIMUN-style conferences handle all of this differently, so check your conference’s rules sheet. For the full picture of how speeches, points, and motions fit together, see our plain-English guide to Model UN rules of procedure.
Common questions
How do you start a Model UN opening speech?
Open with the formal address, usually "Honorable Chair, fellow delegates," then spend your first sentence on a hook: a concrete image, a sharp claim, or a short question that frames the topic your way. State your country’s position within the first three sentences. Do not spend the opening thanking the chair at length or restating the agenda; the room already knows the topic.
How long is a General Speakers List speech?
At most US-style conferences the default speaking time is 60 to 90 seconds, and the committee can change it by motion. At a normal committee pace of about 140 words per minute, that is roughly 140 to 210 words. Write to the word budget rather than the clock and you will rarely be cut off.
What should you do if you get gaveled mid-sentence?
Finish the phrase you are on in a few words, say thank you, and sit down. Running long is normal and carries no penalty; chairs notice delegates who handle the gavel gracefully. The structural fix is to put your call to action before your final sentence, so the part that matters lands even if the ending does not.
Should you memorize a Model UN opening speech?
Memorize the first and last sentences and deliver the middle from a short outline. Full memorization tends to collapse under nerves, and reading a script word for word kills eye contact and flattens delivery. The outline approach also survives the common case where an earlier speaker says something you need to answer.
How formal should the language in a Model UN speech be?
Formal in address, plain in vocabulary. Refer to yourself as "we" or "the delegate of" your country, avoid slang, and follow the conference’s conventions for openers and yields. Beyond that, short concrete sentences beat diplomatic-sounding padding every time; formality is not the same as complexity.