An essay is a coherent and concise paper which should reflect your profound awareness of the problem, ability to analyze necessary and relevant sources and present your findings in short, your views on the agenda and your ideas for its possible resolution. The essay will help us estimate your understanding of the issue and the contribution you will possibly make to its solution.

Writing a good essay is the key to be selected to any committee and especially to ours. The work represents a short analysis of the Report of the Expert and all the documentation mentioned in which you are to examine in order not only to send an application but also to pass an interview. 

To make the process simpler, we highly recommend you to abide by the following essay structure:

Structure

• The advisable limit is 400-500 words.
• Your work should be divided into 3 parts: introduction, main body, and conclusion. 

1. The introduction describes the agenda and its historical background in general. 
2. The main body requires from you to show the knowledge of the Report of the Expert and explain why our current agenda is of crucial importance and what actions UNESCO is taking to deal with these issues. 
3. The conclusion is a part where you can show your ideas and potential solutions to tackle the agenda’s issues.

• Your work should be written in official style and be informative.

Content

• Your essay must represent your own opinion on the issue, not the position of a particular country.
• You should carefully examine the Report of the Expert in order to write the essay in accordance with the agenda.
• Over the course of the work you must be guided by the documents and resolutions adopted by the UN bodies or other reliable international organizations, including those mentioned in the Report of the Expert. The sources of the data and your findings must be mentioned in the form of a footnote.
• You should back up your opinion with the facts and address only to the official sources.
• Try to explain and give examples to every one of your outlined ideas.
• Your proposals on how to address the issue must be stated expressly.
• Avoid plagiarism!

As your work should be supported by a solid factual basis, we recommend you to study the following documents:

• Convention on the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict (1954) and its two Protocols (1954 and 1999);
• Convention on Preventing the Illicit Trafficking of Cultural Property (1970);
• World Heritage Convention (1972);
• Underwater Heritage Convention (2001);
• Intangible Cultural Heritage Convention (2003).

Good luck!

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization Experts,

Daria Petrovskaya and Andrey Pisarevsky

C-MIMUN 2023

Honorable delegates,

After writing an essay, accepted by the Expert, and passing an interview, you will be distributed a country or an organization from the list of observers for its presentation at the Churkin Moscow International Model United Nations 2023. The next stage of pre-model work is writing a Position Paper which represents a quite short speech in which delegates are to state their representative’s position on the agenda and suggest solutions that fall in line with their national stance. If you want to add some your own ideas to the position of a represented state/organization, they can’t contradict their official course, statements of the officials and the UN Charter, for sure.

Your Position Paper should be clear, well-structured and informative. The volume of your report remains at your discretion, though, in general, it varies from 1 to 2 sheets A4 (Times New Roman, 14 font). 

Please, remember about time limit for speaking that will be set up during the conference! 

P.s. This concerns only the document that you are going to send to the Expert. You can prepare any amount of written text to use during the work at the conference but in the Position Paper you need only to clarify your state’s/organization’s view of the agenda. 

Writing a Position Paper will help you examine the agenda deeper, understand better the views of the country/organization, distributed to you, and prepare yourself for the upcoming session. For those of you, who take part in the MUN for the first time, this might seem a bit intimidating but it’s extremely important for a fruitful work during the conference.

According to our committee’s agenda, we suggest that you should research and present the following aspects in your Position Paper:

• the country’s contribution to the world heritage protection, its cooperation with other states and political actors over the issue;
• protection of cultural heritage at the local level (e.g., you can mention some adopted normative tools, if any);
• examples of cultural heritage sites (both tangible and intangible) in the country (2-3 will be enough);
• threats to which cultural heritage sites in the country are exposed;
• approaches that the country implements to promote creativity (based on those mentioned in the Expert Report);
• a list of theses to include in the Resolution suggested by your delegation (what you would like to suggest to the International Community). 

For the delegates, representing observers, may be useful to research:

• the history of the represented Organization, it’s credentials and competence;
• the mechanisms of interaction with its members.

You shouldn’t do the following:

• • completely retell the content of the Expert Report;

• you had better not to use Wikipedia as it isn’t a reliable source!

To prepare yourself better you can use the following sources:

• UNESCO official website;
• UNESCO Digital Library;
• Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage;
• World Heritage List;
• Intangible Cultural Heritage Constellation;
• the speeches of the officials of the state/organization;
• the sources used in the Expert Report;
• the websites of national ministries.

Feel free to address to different UN bodies! We hope this information will be useful for you during preparation to the conference. We wish you fruitful and interesting work! See you on the sidelines of the C-MIMUN 2023!

Report of the Expert