Public speaking for delegates.

In MUN, you have 60 to 90 seconds to introduce yourself to a room of strangers. The delegates who treat that time as a script — and the delegates who treat it as a performance — both lose. The third path is rarer.

The mindset shift

Most beginners speak to be seen. Most experienced delegates speak to move the room. The difference shows up immediately.

The "be seen" speech tells you how the country feels: it lists harms, demands action, finishes with a flourish. It is a speech about the speaker. The "move the room" speech tells you what to do next: it identifies the moment, locates an opening, and proposes the next clause. It is a speech about the resolution.

Chairs reward the second kind, almost without exception. Once you internalise that shift, your speeches stop sounding like school assemblies and start sounding like committee.

A 60-second speech, structured

The speech architecture that works in MUN — for GSL or moderated caucus — is the same four-move structure. Roughly 15 seconds per move.

Move 1 — Anchor (15 seconds)

Open with one image, one statistic, one quotation, or one specific moment. Not "climate change is the defining challenge of our time." That is wallpaper. Use: "In 2024, sixteen islands of Tuvalu's nine main atolls recorded permanent saltwater intrusion." Specificity is authority.

Move 2 — Position (15 seconds)

State your country's position with calibrated language. Not "we strongly support" — "the Republic of France welcomes the principle of [X], while noting reservations regarding [Y]." Calibration signals diplomatic literacy.

Move 3 — Proposal (20 seconds)

This is the operative move — what you want the committee to do. One specific proposal. Phrase it like an operative clause. "France calls upon this body to establish a UNDP-administered trust fund of $200 million, replenished triennially, with proceeds dedicated to coastal adaptation in Pacific SIDS."

Move 4 — Open door (10 seconds)

Close with a sentence that signals partnership. Not "thank you, chair." Use: "France looks forward to working with the delegations of Brazil, Bangladesh and Norway on the financing language. Thank you, chair." The named-allies close opens caucus before caucus opens.

Opening lines that the room remembers

The first sentence determines whether the next 50 seconds are heard. Three structures that work:

• The image. "Last August, the Tuvaluan foreign minister addressed this same body in a recorded message — knee-deep in seawater that, in 2009, would have been ankle-deep."
• The number. "Twenty-one and a half million people are displaced by climate every year — more than the populations of Greece, Sweden or Portugal."
• The contradiction. "This body adopted resolution 77/276 unanimously. Twenty-three months later, not a single binding instrument has followed it."

What does not work: rhetorical questions, "honoured chair distinguished delegates," and any opening that begins with "in today's world." The room has heard those openings forty times. The chair stops listening at "in today's world."

Delivery — pace, pause, posture

Pace

The single biggest fix for nervous speakers: slow down. Aim for roughly 130 words per minute — about 130 words in a 60-second speech. Most beginners speak at 180. The slower delegate sounds older, more credible, and more diplomatic.

Pause

Use one pause per speech. After the anchor, before the proposal, or both. A two-second pause is the most powerful tool you have — it forces the room to listen. Beginners fear silence; the chairs love it.

Voice

Project from the diaphragm, not the throat. Aim the volume at the back wall, not the chair. Pitch lower than your conversational register — natural is fine, but the room responds to gravitas, and gravitas lives a half-step below your default voice.

Posture

Stand with your weight on both feet. Hands free or holding a single page of notes — not crossed, not clasped. Look at three points in the room: left, centre, right. Cycling between them every ten seconds keeps the whole chamber engaged.

The hands

Keep them above the waist, in the "interview window." Gesture to emphasise specific words — not constantly. Hands moving the whole time read as nervous; hands still and then deliberate read as composed.

Moderated caucus speeches

Moderated caucus speeches are shorter — typically 30 to 60 seconds. The structure compresses, but the rules stay the same.

• Skip the anchor. The room is already on the topic; you don't need a 15-second hook.
• Open with the move. Start with what you want to do. "France proposes adding a third subclause to operative 4 — specifically, a five-year sunset review."
• Defend the move. One sentence of reasoning. "This addresses the concern raised by Brazil regarding open-ended commitments without progress measurement."
• Name the next ally. "France looks forward to support from the delegations of Germany, Mexico and Indonesia."

Yields, points and interruptions

At the end of a GSL speech, you yield your remaining time. There are three options.

Yield to the chair (default)

Safe, ends your turn cleanly. Best when you've delivered a tight speech with no obvious follow-up needed.

Yield to questions

Invites points of information from the floor. Powerful when you are confident — well-handled questions raise your reputation more than the speech itself. Risky when your research is shallow; one bad question undoes a strong speech.

Yield to another delegate

Pass your remaining time to a named delegation. Useful for building visible alliances. The receiving delegate gets uninterrupted floor time, which is a gift you can call in later.

Managing nerves

Nerves never fully disappear. The goal is not to eliminate them — it is to channel them. The body chemistry of nervousness is identical to the body chemistry of focus. The difference is what you do with it.

• Box breathing — four seconds in, four hold, four out, four hold. Drop your heart rate before you stand.
• Anchor the first three words — memorise them. Once the first three words are out, the rest of the speech follows.
• Look at one friendly delegate — for the first sentence. Then expand outward.
• Treat the placard as choreography — raising it on cue gives your body something to do, which calms the rest.

Three drills for this week

Drill 1 — The 60-second clip

Pick any current news article. Write a 60-second speech on it as the country of your choice. Record it on your phone. Watch it back at 1.25x speed. Most beginners discover they were already speaking too fast at 1.0x.

Drill 2 — The cold open

Open a random Wikipedia article on a country. Stand up. Give a 30-second speech in that country's voice on a topic of the article. The point is comfort with cold improvisation — half of MUN is reacting to motions you didn't anticipate.

Drill 3 — The mirror reformulation

Watch a recorded MUN speech. Pause it after the first sentence. Try to reformulate the same sentence in three different opening structures (image / number / contradiction). This drill builds the muscle of opening on demand.