Memory and Machine

Difficulty Level: Beginner

Some things are lost quietly, a language with its last speaker, a mind that no longer has to think for itself. As globalization thins the world's tongues and AI arrives in classrooms, UNESCO faces the same question in two forms, what is worth preserving in human memory and human cognition, and what disappears the moment we stop tending it. This committee asks delegates to decide what we keep, and what we let a machine replace.

• Subtopic A: Safeguarding Endangered and Indigenous Languages
  A language does not die by decree, it dies with its last generation of speakers. Roughly 40% of the world's 7,000+ indigenous languages are endangered, leading to the Decade of Indigenous Languages (2022-2032). A language is never only words, and its last speaker takes an unread library with them. Delegates should weigh national cohesion vs. minority rights and archiving vs. living speakers, fund mother-tongue education, and ask whether a language can be rescued by policy, or only by those who keep using it.

• Subtopic B: Artificial Intelligence and the Right to Education
  Every education system was forced a technology it did not ask nor had rules for. UNESCO found fewer than 10% of 450+ institutions had any AI policy, shortly publishing guidance on AI. The deeper divide is cognition, not policy. Researchers found students using AI showed weakest brain activity and little recall, a cognitive debt with a reverse Flynn effect of falling scores, all while AI slop crowds the internet. Delegates must weigh personalized learning vs. dependence, and decide whether education should adapt or set its terms with technology.

Borderless Crimes

Difficulty Level: Intermediate

The world's crime conventions were written for a slower age, for physical plants and borders. Today the threats are chemical and digital, moving faster than any policy, from synthetic opioids that reinvent themselves after every ban to cybercrime that crosses every border at once. This committee asks delegates to govern crimes that recognize no frontier, without handing states new power to abuse the citizens they claim to protect.

• Subtopic A: Governing Fentanyl, Nitazenes, and the Precursor Chemical Trade
  The 1961 and 1971 conventions were written for plants, but today's crisis is chemical: fentanyl precursors moving from labs through cartels, nitazenes 500 times stronger than morphine in exported supplies. Chemistry now moves faster than diplomacy, with traffickers sourcing elsewhere and synthesizing their own. Delegates must weigh international cooperation, harm reduction vs. enforcement, treaty reform vs. faster scheduling, and ask how a rigid system adapts to a crisis that reinvents itself.

• Subtopic B: Combatting Cybercrime and Protecting Privacy
  For years there was no global cybercrime treaty, only regional patchworks like the Budapest Convention that much of the world never joined. Hanoi changed that, where 72 states signed the 2025 UN Convention against Cybercrime, but the win is complicated. Experts warn its vague definition and thin safeguards provide a surveillance tool for governments. Delegates should navigate enforcement vs. privacy, data sovereignty vs. cross-border cooperation, and ask whether one set of rules can govern borderless crime without empowering state overreach.

Pushing Baselines

Difficulty Level: Intermediate

International law draws its authority from lines, on maps, along coasts, between what a state may claim and what it may not. Those lines are now pushed from both ends, redrawn by nations that reject the rulings they lose and erased by seas that swallow the land beneath them. This committee asks delegates to decide what a baseline, a border, and a binding judgment are worth when the world stops respecting them.

• Subtopic A: Contested Islands and the Limits of Maritime Law
  July 2026 marks 10 years since the South China Sea Arbitral Award, which found no legal basis for historic rights beyond UNCLOS, yet China still calls it null and void. Other disputes never reach a tribunal; Korea holds Liancourt Rocks while Japan campaigns on retaking them, and Russia, Canada, and Denmark file overlapping Arctic shelf claims over one ridge. Delegates should weigh compulsory jurisdiction vs. state consent, rock vs. island, binding rulings vs. no enforcement, and ask what a ruling is worth when the loser simply declines it.

• Subtopic B: Sea-Level Rise and the Continuity of Statehood
  International law assumes a state has territory, and no one has answered what happens when the sea takes it. Pacific Islands Forum leaders and AOSIS insist their maritime zones and statehood stand regardless of the water, and the ILC considered whether baselines are ambulatory, retreating with the coast and dragging the EEZ inland, or stay fixed forever, splitting small island states against maritime powers eyeing redrawn zones. Delegates should preserve entitlements and statehood, address displaced populations, and ask whether a state can exist once there is nowhere left to stand.

Sovereignty in the Skies

Difficulty Level: Advanced

Every flight begins from a simple assumption, that the sky above a nation belongs to it. The Chicago Convention of 1944 wrote that principle into law, but it is now buckling, caught between states that close, spoof, and weaponize their airspace and a warming planet that aviation can no longer ignore. This committee asks delegates to defend a system built for cooperation now that sovereignty itself, and the climate, have become the threat.

• Subtopic A: Civil Aviation in Contested & Closed Airspace
  The Chicago Convention built civil aviation on state sovereignty, but it is now the threat. Airspace closures have redrawn flight paths, conflicts have choked flight corridors, and GNSS spoofing throws aircraft off their own navigation, showing how easily a state can weaponize its skies. Delegates must weigh global reliability and safety against sovereignty, build frameworks for conflict-zone risk assessment and GNSS resilience, and ask when a flight of 550 souls outweighs policy.

• Subtopic B: Decarbonizing International Aviation and the CORSIA Reckoning
  The Paris Agreement neglected civil aviation, referring the problem to ICAO. Its answer? CORSIA, an offset scheme turning mandatory in 2027. The catch is Sustainable Aviation Fuel, expensive and barely existing at scale, where inequitable access could ground airlines before they reach the skies. The EU already prohibits “unsafe” airlines from its airspace, and nothing stops the same for carriers short of CORSIA. Delegates should negotiate who pays, set SAF financing and credibility standards, and ask whether CORSIA is good enough.