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Tips for Giving Speeches in Crisis

 Hi Delegates, Hope your prep for BMUN is going well! With the conference coming up so soon, we wanted to give you some tips for how to give speeches, particularly how to give speeches in crisis committees. Speeches are your most used tool in the frontroom, so it is essential that you use them well! 1. Speak frequently!!! Crisis committees are much smaller compared to GA committees with around 20-30 delegates in a room. This means that you will have the opportunity to speak way more often, and you should take advantage of this! Your placard should always be raised if you haven’t spoken in a caucus, and if it seems like not enough people want to speak to finish the caucus, try to speak again (as long as you aren’t annoying your chairs)! 2. Impact over eloquence. Because you are speaking so frequently, and because crisis requires constant adaptation, it is less important to give a speech that is beautiful and more important to make a splash with what you say. Use your speeches to ste...
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Approaches for Writing Directives

  Hello Delegates! As you all begin preparing for committee, I wanted to give some tips on ways to approach the topic and spearhead ways to solve the incoming crisis that you all will be posed with. These tips will be general, so make sure to consider how they play into your character’s stance and your overarching crisis arc. As a note, these tips will be very relevant to the beginning of committee, but due to the ever-changing nature of crisis, may not be the main focus for the entirety of conference!  Nature of the War: The nature of this war is unlike that of what one would typically expect. Rather than battles occurring between both sides, there are instead strategic attacks that prompt reactions. The FLN had a successful victory in the recent past, the Philippeville Massacres, though it led to violent reactions from the French. Consider how the existing nature of the war will play into the actions that you will take moving forward, both in frontroom and backroom. Are the...
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International Relations Post Independence

Hello Delegates, Conference is coming up, and we hope you're just as excited as we are! As you write your position papers and learn more about your characters, we wanted to continue to bring in some outside sources that you find insightful.   While our committee focuses on the Algerian Revolution's timeline directly, it is also important to consider these events in the broader scope of European colonialism. In Algeria, as in most other post-colonial countries, the transition to an independent state is rarely a smooth process and there are long lasting socioeconomic, political, and cultural impacts. I found this article on the Algeria-Europe economic integration interesting, especially the beginning which provides some insights to Algeria's international relations immediately after the war. There are many factors that go into a country's decisions on foreign policy. As noted in the article, Algeria mostly distanced itself from Europe, understandably so as Algeria recove...
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Key Terms and Takeaways from the Background

Hello Delegates! We just wanted to share some Key Terms and information with you that we find important to this topic and the preparation that you all are doing leading up to the weekend of the conference. We hope these terms help solidify your research and give you more confidence for committee! Colonization: the process of one country or entity settling and/or establishing control over the indigenous people in the area. France colonized Algeria in the 1830s in which they established Algeria to be an integral part of France.  Nationalism: The advocacy for political independence and self determination of a nation. Nationalism in Algeria started progressing in the 1920s by the Muslims in French Algeria because of decades of religious destruction and the North African Star movement in 1926. These views continued to increase in the 1940s after WWII as more Algerian Muslims who supported assimilation joined the movement for independence.  Pied Noirs: Refers to the European settl...
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Procedure and Committee Flow

  Hi Delegates! I wanted to check in with you to provide some more insight to how our committee is going to work at BMUN 71. JCC will be using Crisis BMUN Procedure. Procedure   Our committee(s) will use standard BMUN crisis procedure. From our collective experience as chairs, we believe that this procedure is the best method to promote thoughtful debate while also enabling the dynamic nature of crisis committees. This procedure also lends itself to our committees in that delegates will be representing members of a sort of cabinet or alliance that must discuss and debate on what  collective actions to take as a united front while also getting regular updates to the situation of Algeria.  For those of you not familiar with BMUN or crisis procedure, I'll give a brief overview here. Crisis committees at BMUN use similar procedures to General Assembly committees with some key differences. We will facilitate discussion in committee with moderated and unmoderated caucuses,...
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Directives: How-To Guide

  Hey, delegates! We hope you’re super excited for JCC BMUN 71! As you start to finalize your research on your characters and position paper, we recognize that using your research effectively will help produce great directives. We are here to provide some food for thought on what a strong directive may look like and important ideas to keep in mind when formulating directives during committee.  First of all, what is a directive? A directive is a statement or plan of action taken by a committee or individual that typically responds to a crisis update. Directives are the most common type of deliverable seen in crisis committees, and there are multiple types of directives you will encounter in crisis (e.g. private, public, joint).  Directives should contain points made during committee and aspects regarding the most recent crisis update. What makes a good directive? Broadly speaking, a strong directive should encompass a few key elements: Should be specific and action-oriente...
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Rhetoric of Revolution - Discussion Post

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Hi delegates! There are just two more weeks until BMUN 71, and I am super excited to meet you all! As I was doing more background research on the topic, I came across this article, The Algerian Revolution Changed the World for the Better ,  from the leftist political magazine Jacobin. The article has a lot of great information about peoples' sentiments during various points before, during, and after the war. It generally characterizes the initial war strategy as placing action over thought out rhetoric and ideology. Said ideology was really only given form, the article argues, by Franz Fanon later into the decade.  In addition to generally outlining the transformation of rhetoric about the war, the article also explains how the rhetoric differed depending on population. Particularly, and most obviously, the native Algerian population talked about the war much differently than the French--either those within France or those in Algeria.  After you read the article, I highly...
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