Country Assignment Policy

Northwest Model United Nations seeks to balance the interest of schools in securing the country assignments they have requested and the interests of the educational quality of the conference and other schools who may not have registered yet. To this end, NWMUN has developed a policy that are used in determining countries for assignment to registering schools. This policy applies to the conference's registration team, and is presented here to transparently communicate to delegations how their country assignments are determined.

These are not inflexible rules, and often two or more may be in conflict; additionally, special circumstances may dictate taking actions that contradict one or more of the guidelines. However, all of the items listed below are considered by the registration team in assigning countries. Other factors not listed here may also be used in determining the country assignments, and the final decisions on country assignments are made by the Secretary-General in partnership with the parent organization of NWMUN, the Northwest Association for Global Affairs.

If you are interested in viewing our policy for delegations to use, once they have been assigned countries by NWMUN, when they assign each individual spot to individual members of their delegation, please view our Delegate Assignment Policy.

1) Schools will not be assigned more than two countries on the Security Council, or three countries on the Reformed Security Council. Schools will not be assigned more than one permanent member of the Security Council, and schools are not assigned a permanent member of the Security Council their first year in attendance at NWMUN-Seattle. No delegation will be assigned a permanent member of the Security Council if they have had a permanent member in the two immediately preceding years of NWMUN-Seattle.

2) NWMUN will strive to ensure that delegates from a given school are evenly distributed throughout the committees of the conference, and that each school has a reasonable balance of regions represented in their assigned countries. NWMUN will strive to ensure a reasonable balance of countries by size of delegation, with no school solely having multi-delegate (2+) countries and no school having solely single-delegate (GA-only) countries.

3) No two countries in historical, current, or potential conflict will be assigned to the same school. Neighboring countries without significant history or potential of conflict are unlikely to be assigned to the same school. Countries with a relationship in which one dominates or is perceived to dominate the other's foreign policy on an issue under consideration will not be assigned to the same school. Finally, regional players in the same region will not be assigned to the same school.

4) NWMUN will endeavor not to assign the same countries to a school in consecutive years, especially in the context of permanent Council members. Additionally, the experience of the conference with a given school in previous years will be used to determine the assignment of countries which must be filled for the committees they are assigned in to run properly; in this context, a school's previous disruptive conduct or early departure will affect their likelihood of being assigned permanent Security Council members in subsequent years (for example).