Crisis · Committee 05

The Meridian Crisis

Crisis Cabinet · 20 delegates · Advanced

Fictional Scenario Constitutional Rupture Resource Conflict Foreign Intervention

The Federal Republic of Meridia does not exist — and that is the point. A maritime federation of seven island provinces strung across a contested sea, Meridia has held together for forty years on a fragile bargain between its wealthy industrial north and its poorer, populous south. This committee opens on the morning that bargain breaks.

Three weeks ago, a survey vessel confirmed the largest rare-earth deposit on the planet beneath the Meridian Shelf — in waters two provinces both claim. The northern provincial assembly has voted to nationalize the find; the south has called it theft; the President has suspended the federal charter “temporarily”; and as of this morning, two foreign carrier groups are steaming toward the shelf, each invited by a different faction. The cabinet has hours, not days.

This is an advanced crisis committee. Each delegate holds a portfolio — a minister, a provincial governor, a military commander, an industrialist — with its own powers and its own agenda. Directives move the world in real time; the dais answers with consequences. Delegates who wait for the perfect resolution will find the crisis has already moved past them.

Topics

One republic. Two ways it ends.

Everything in the room bends toward two questions: whether Meridia stays one country, and whether the powers offshore let it decide that for itself.

Topic A

The Constitutional Rupture

With the federal charter suspended and two provinces claiming the same seabed, the cabinet must decide whether Meridia survives as a single state. The legal questions — who owns a discovery in disputed internal waters, whether a suspended charter still binds — collide with the political ones, and the longer the cabinet debates, the more facts the provinces create on the ground.

Sub-questions

  • Can the federation hold — through a new revenue-sharing settlement, a constitutional convention, or federal force — and at what cost to which province?
  • Who holds legitimate authority while the charter is suspended: the President, the federal legislature, or the provincial assemblies?
  • How should the rare-earth wealth be governed so that it stabilizes the union rather than detonates it?

Starter Resources

  • Background Guide — The Meridian Charter (fictional) — the suspended constitution and the provincial bargain HTSMUN VI
  • Crisis Dossier — The Meridian Shelf Survey (fictional) — what the survey found, and where HTSMUN VI
  • Real-world parallel: federal resource disputes — Nigeria, Iraq, and the politics of who owns the ground chair’s brief
Topic B

The Foreign Fleets & the Shelf

Two outside powers have arrived, each backing a faction, each wanting the deposit. Topic B is the external crisis: the cabinet must keep a domestic rupture from becoming a proxy war, decide what it will trade for protection, and find out the price of every offer of “help” that has appeared offshore overnight.

Sub-questions

  • Should Meridia accept foreign backing to resolve the internal crisis — and what sovereignty does each offer quietly cost?
  • How can the cabinet de-escalate two carrier groups in contested waters without inviting the very intervention it fears?
  • What leverage does control of the world’s largest rare-earth deposit give a small state — and how long can it hold it?

Starter Resources

  • Crisis Dossier — Offers from Abroad (fictional) — what each power is proposing, and demanding HTSMUN VI
  • Background Guide — The Meridian Sea (fictional) — the maritime geography and the claims HTSMUN VI
  • Real-world parallel: small states and great-power competition — how the small play the large, and survive chair’s brief
Coming this fall Background Guide

Crisis guide ships this fall.

Written by the dais, the Meridian guide is the delegate’s world: the history of the federation, the seven provinces and their grievances, the survey that started it all, your portfolio powers, the rules of crisis, and the position-paper rubric. Everything you debate begins here.

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