“Designing peace-building mechanisms towards reinforced territorial sovereignty” with SPECPOL
written by Grace Lituba, Journalist, LIMUN 2025
As the SPECPOL (Special Political and Decolonization) committee is progressing, its chairs - Emily, Gonzalo, and Lucas - shared their insights on the debates, delegate performance, and key challenges encountered in this year’s simulation. SPECPOL is one of the six principal committees of the General Assembly of the UN. This committee covers a cluster of five decolonization-related agenda items. The simulation chose to focus on the topic of “designing peacebuilding mechanisms towards reinforced territorial sovereignty”.
A promising start for a beginner committee
The chairs have been really appreciative of the work done by the delegates. “It's a beginner committee and we know the difficulties that this implies, especially regarding the rules of procedures” shared Gonzalo before saying that he was surprised by the quality of the competition since they were high level. Emily was surprised by their eloquence even though it was their first committee the delegates were able to exhibit an impressive ability to make their ideas clear for other delegations. Lucas, also enthusiastic about the committee, raised that also it had been challenging for them to make the delegates realise what Specpol really was: “it’s an international relation committee so it should be the focus” but the delegates really were passionate about other tempting matters such as corruption.
The chairs shared that SPECPOL is often confused with social committees and the topics for the simulation aimed to raise awareness towards the security considerations of this committee.
Considering that the delegates are progressing at an incredible speed the chair didn’t look worried about the progression of the debates. “The beautiful thing about the beginner community is that delegates evolve really fast. The progress is amazing. They really take into account the feedback”, the chairs shared.
Shaping the debate: blocks and divisions
Regarding the delegations, the chairs can say that of course there are blocks that are more or less similar to those who exist in the real world such as the European Union or the BRICS. The biggest point of contention seems to be connected to the key question of interference and autonomy. To what extent should the UN Agencies should interfere with what is - according to the said countries - their regalian powers. The chairs made it clear, the application of the peacebuilding mechanism created two blocks. On the first hand, there is a block that wants to apply the mechanism with an external regard interfering to make sure it is applied the same way everywhere. While, on the other hand, others seem to be unyielding to meddling as it appears to look like an intrusion according to certain countries - so they would like to get more independence for regional organisation. After one day and a half, the draft resolutions are taking form. For now, we can’t predict what is going to be the final resolution(s) to the discussed topics but we can surely say that seeing their current evolution, the debate will continue to evolve.
