ISSA
(International Supervision of Superhuman Affairs)
Student Leaders
CHAIR
Rena Yan
Director's Letter
Dear Delegates,
Welcome to NMHMUN, and welcome to ISSA!
My name is Rena Yan, I’m an art/humanities student here at Shanghai High School International Division (or SHSID). I’ve been doing MUN for the past 3 years or so at conferences for UChicago, Oxford, MIT, Harvard etc,. I have quite a bit of experience with MUN, so I’m thrilled to be able to chair this conference and bring the experience to you!
The reason I chose this committee was because I’ve always wanted to attend a more fun conference myself, but since I never got the chance, I thought why not do one myself. This committee will be quite different from typical MUN conferences, but besides fictional delegates and universes, the committee will still generally follow MUN procedure: so for new delegates, this would be a great place to familiarize yourself with the format while having fun.
In this committee, delegates will represent fictional characters from either Marvel or DC, either as a delegate of a nation or as independent superheroes. In the universe of this committee, delegates will attend the first ever conference of the International Supervision of Superhuman Affairs committee (which I admit is inspired from “The Boys”). It is up to the delegates to decide the guidelines of how governments and superheroes will cooperate against villains and in the security of humanity.
I’m looking forward to interesting debates! Hope to see you all soon, ready to discuss the implications of what overpowered meta-humans living within our world could mean.
Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.
Good Luck!
Rena Yan (Chair)
Chelsea Devlin (Assistant Director)
ISSA, or the International Supervision of Superhuman Affairs, is a committee dedicated to addressing how to deal with rising superheroes and rising supervillains with powers greater than what the government can guarantee defense against. Acting within the universe of DC and Marvel, delegates will debate the ethics of vigilantism and if humans can trust superheroes with so much power.
ISSA Topic Summary
The Role of Superheroes Under Governments
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​With the rise of the first superheroes in what is considered “the Age of Wonders” (DC Animated: Earth 2), debates have arisen as to whether this form of vigilantism should be allowed, and whether superheroes should be allowed to work independently. With the rise of superheroes, the threats that Earth has faced from supervillains has also risen intensely. With earth’s own human villains such as Lex Luthor, the Joker, as well as superhuman villains like Poison Ivy, as well as the now realized existence of extraterrestrial and God-like villains such as Darkseid, Sinestro and the Yellow Lanterns, Ares, it seems that only superheroes are a strong enough force to counter these extremely powerful villains. However, even as the world has come to rely on superheroes for protection against these villains, that doesn’t mean our governments can so easily trust these independent superheroes and superhero organizations. Governments question whether superheroes hold too much power as individuals, if people’s safety’s are harmed by their mere existence, and if there is a way for governments to control superheroes if worse comes to worse. On the other hand, there is room for cooperation between governments and superhumans to help each other against enemies, form weaponry and advance humanity with the knowledge of extra-terrestrial beings and superhuman potential.