Guide to the Memorandum

Your assignment prior to the role-play is to prepare a set of prepared clauses for a potential Security Council resolution. These clauses, along with those of other students, will form the basis of the discussion in the role-play.

You should bring

• two to three preambular clauses that describe the issue at hand, consider the international context, and outline previous agreements and existing organizations; and
• three to four operative clauses that present responses to the situation.

Each operative clause should present a complete proposal. Make sure that your proposed solutions are within the powers of the Security Council and are practical. Your operative clauses might be designed to work in concert (perhaps economic sanctions, mediation, and a peacekeeping force) or might be a set of alternatives from which you hope one will be adopted (perhaps three peacekeeping proposals that differ in their details).

In writing each of your operative clauses, consider the following points:

• Who: Who is acting, and for whose benefit?
• What: What is the response specifically?
• When: When will it be implemented? Is there a deadline, a time frame, or recurrence?
• Where: Where will it be implemented specifically?
• Why: Why is this solution effective?
• How: How will this solution be implemented? If countries must support the response, how will they be persuaded to do so?
• Funding: How will the response be funded?

If your operative clauses start to get long and messy, use subsidiary clauses!

The goal should be to create clauses that include all the information necessary for putting the plan into action. It can be helpful to imagine an official tasked with carrying out the resolution and asking whether they have all the information they need to implement it.