LAHORE: The Civil Services Academy (CSA) has decided to institutionalise Model United Nations as a permanent component of the Common Training Programme (CTP), with Director General Farhan Aziz Khawaja directing that future batches of probationary officers be given the opportunity to participate in an expanded, multi-day exercise covering 15 parallel committees.
The decision follows the successful pilot of CSA-MUN26, organised by the Ethical Leadership Society, which demonstrated in an expanded, multi-day exercise covering 15 parallel committees.
The decision follows the successful pilot of CSA-MUN26, organised by the Ethical Leadership Society, which demonstrated the potential of the format as a practical training exercise in ethical leadership, negotiation, public speaking, consensus-building and formal drafting.
The DG’s directive represents a shift from a showcase event involving a limited number of delegates to a structured training component in which every probationary officer would receive a substantive role. The initiative is intended to become a recurring feature of the CTP calendar, supported by a standard set of research briefs, position papers, rules of procedure and assessment criteria that can be reused by successive cohorts.
The pilot was conducted at Jinnah Auditorium on the motion, “Palestine after the Ceasefire — A Free State, a Shared State, or a Managed Partition?” Twelve country delegations, each comprising two officers nominated by the academy’s 12 Khidmat un-N s societies, took part in the formal debate, while the remaining probationary officers constituted a voting United Nations General Assembly.
The exercise brought together delegations representing countries including Pakistan, Palestine, Israel, the United States, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Iran. Officers delivered opening statements, faced cross examination and participated in unmoderated caucuses before producing five competing draft resolutions in formal UN format.
Among the proposals were a Pakistan led coalition text setting out a binding pathway towards Palestinian statehood, an Israeli framework conditioning peace on sequenced disarmament, and a US-sponsored resolution that secured co-sponsorship from Egypt, Qatar, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. The final assessment combined the vote of the General Assembly with evaluations by a Faculty Judging Committee and the chairs, after which Best Delegate honours were awarded.
While the event had been reported as the academy’s inaugural Model UN, its significance now lies in the institutional direction that emerged from it. The pilot showed that officers were able to prepare rigorously, defend positions assigned to them rather than merely express personal views, negotiate with competing delegations and produce formal policy texts under tight time constraints.
It also exposed the limitations of a small-scale format. Only 24 officers could serve as formal delegates, while the remainder participated from the floor. The response demonstrated, according to the academy, that demand for the exercise extended well beyond the available delegate positions.
The proposed expansion is therefore designed around universal participation. Instead of selecting a small number of officers for a single committee, future CTPs would distribute delegates across 15 committees so that every probationary officer researches an issue, represents an assigned position, negotiates with other participants and contributes to a formal outcome.
The academy’s objectives for the permanent component centre on five areas including universal participation, ethical judgment under pressure, development of core civil service skills, leadership training for the presidents of the Khidmat un-N s societies and creation of a repeatable curriculum model.
