The UNIS-UN Committee is a student-run organization which plans and hosts an annual conference held in the General Assembly Hall of the United Nations Headquarters in New York City, the first Thursday and Friday of March.
The Committee consists of five commissions - Visiting Schools, Editing (in charge of compiling the Working Paper for the conference), Speakers/Debate, Public Information and Communications/Technology, and Finance & Resources - which work cohesively preparing and conducting various aspects of the conference. Each commission is lead by two to three coordinators (a combination of juniors and seniors) and the commission heads form a separate group within the Organizing Committee known as the Executive Committee (EXCOMM).
Preparations for the conference begin nearly a year in advance, and include finding and researching a contemporary global issue, compiling a list of speakers, inviting several hundred students from many international and national schools and if necessary , arranging their accommodations with UNIS families, organizing the UNIS and Conference debates (both held on separate occasions), selecting six participating students to partake in the conference Student Panel (in which the participants propose possible solutions to the problems raised by the theme of the conference), and compiling a Working Paper of articles pertaining to the conference topic; they are written by members of the UNIS-UN Organizing Committee and then edited by the UNIS-UN Editing Committee. Past conference titles include Global Warming: Confronting the Crisis (2007), 30 Years of UNIS-UN: The role of the Corporation in Today’s World (2006), and Global Health: Rights and Responsibilities in the 21 st Century (2005). Previous speakers include the Secretary-General of the United Nations, H.E. Mr. Ban Ki Moon, Former Secretary-General of the United Nations H.E. Mr. Kofi Annan, Internationally-acclaimed Global Warming Activist Laurie David, Independent Documentary Filmmaker Morgan Spurlock, Musician, Actor, and Social Activist Harry Belafonte among others.