UN Security Council

The Council consists of 15 member states - 5 permanent and 10 non-permanent, elected by the UN General Assembly for a two-year term of 5 each year. Corresponding amendments to the UN Charter were introduced on December 17, 1963 by resolution of the UN General Assembly 1995 (XVIII) (before that only 6 non-permanent members were members of the Council). According to the resolution, 10 non-permanent members of the Security Council are elected on a geographical basis, namely:

• five from African and Asian countries ;
• one from Eastern European countries ;
• two from Latin American states ;
• two - from the states of Western Europe and other states ^[2] .

The presidents of the Council are replaced monthly according to the list of its member states arranged alphabetically in English names ^[3] .

Permanent Members

•   Great Britain
•   China (until 1971 -   Republic of China )
•   Russia (until 1991 -   USSR )
•   USA
•   France

Permanent members of the UN Security Council have a “ veto power ” ^[4] .

This device was largely preserved from the Roosevelt plan of the “four policemen” (1941), modified by the inclusion of France and the addition of a regional component. Thus, the place of China until October 25, 1971 was occupied by the Republic of China , since 1949 controlling only Taiwan and some of the islands adjacent to it ( UN General Assembly Resolution 2758 ).

Russia has been a permanent member of the UN Security Council since December 24, 1991 ^[5] as a state-successor to the USSR .

Non-permanent members

Non-permanent members of the UN Security Council are:

In historical retrospect, more often than others, non-permanent members of the Security Council elected:

• Brazil , Japan - 20 years each as a member of the Security Council;
• Argentina - 18;
• India , Colombia , Pakistan - 14 each;
• Italy , Canada - 12 each.

After the end of the Cold War and large-scale territorial changes in Europe in 1991-1992, these statistics look like this:

• Japan - 11;
• Brazil - 10;
• Argentina - 9;
• India , Italy , Colombia , Pakistan - 7 each;
• Canada , Netherlands , Poland - 6 each;
• Australia , Belgium , Venezuela , Germany , Egypt , Spain , Nigeria , Panama , Peru , Chile - 5 each;
• Denmark , Malaysia , Mexico , New Zealand , Norway , Romania , Turkey , Ukraine , Philippines , Sweden , Yugoslavia - 4 each.

More than 60 UN member states have never been elected members of the Security Council.

Italy and the Netherlands in the 2016 elections received an equal number of votes, and therefore occupy seats in the Security Council for 1 year.

The Security Council is authorized to “investigate any dispute or any situation that may lead to international friction or cause a dispute, to determine whether the continuation of this dispute or situation may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security.” It "determines the existence of any threat to peace, any violation of the world or an act of aggression and makes recommendations or decides what measures should be taken to maintain or restore international peace and security." The Council has the right to apply coercive measures to states violating international peace and security, including those related to the use of armed force. Article 25 of the UN Charter states: "Members of the Organization agree, in accordance with this Charter, to obey the decisions of the Security Council and implement them." Thus, the decisions of the Security Council are binding on all states, since at present almost all universally recognized states of the globe are members of the UN. Moreover, all other UN bodies can only make advisory decisions ^{[9] [approx. 1]} .

In practice, the Security Council’s activities to maintain peace and security consist in determining certain sanctions against violating states (including military operations against them); the introduction of peacekeeping units in conflict zones; organization of post-conflict settlement, including the introduction of international administration in the conflict zone.

The Security Council operates in the following meeting formats ^[10] :

• Security Council meetings, open and closed;
• Meetings of members of the Security Council;
• Informal dialogue;
• Arria Formula Meetings .

Security Council decisions (other than procedural) require 9 out of 15 votes, including the matching votes of all permanent members. This means that each of the five permanent members of the Security Council has a veto over the decisions of the Council, and even the abstinence of such a state should be considered as a veto when voting. However, a permanent member of the Council may inform that his abstinence should not be considered as an obstacle to a decision and that the relevant document should be considered adopted by the UN Security Council if it receives a sufficient number of votes in favor.

The party to the dispute shall abstain from voting ^[11] .

As a rule, Security Council decisions are drawn up in the form of resolutions .

See UN Security Council Resolution

In March 2003, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov stated that “Russia has repeatedly emphasized that, like any living organism, the UN and its Security Council need to be reformed in accordance with the changes that took place in the world during the second half of the last century. in order to reflect the real balance of power in the world and increase the effectiveness of the Security Council and the UN as a whole ” ^[12] .

On September 15, 2004, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan made a statement about the need to reform the UN Security Council. This led to a real battle for the status of permanent members of the Security Council.

On September 22, 2004, before the 59th session of the UN General Assembly, the Brazilian President Luis Ignacio Lula da Silva , German Foreign Minister Joshka Fisher , Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi made a joint statement, noting their intention countries to get a permanent representation in the Security Council: Japan and Germany - as one of the most developed industrial countries in the world and the main sponsors of the UN; India is a country with a billion people, rapidly developing high technology and nuclear weapons, and Brazil as the largest state in Latin America . They also believe that the Security Council structure, established in 1946, is hopelessly outdated, and consider it necessary to increase the number of permanent members of the Security Council who have the right to veto in order to effectively confront new global threats. This group of countries is the so-called “four” - G4 .

Meanwhile, Indonesia said that it should be represented in the Security Council as the most populated (230 million people) Muslim country on the planet. And Italy came up with a proposal to provide a permanent place for the entire European Union with the right to transfer powers from one EU state to another. In addition, three African countries - South Africa , Egypt and Nigeria , intending to represent their continent in the Security Council, also claimed their claims. This group of countries is the so-called “five” - G5 .

Since the mid-1990s, Brazil , Germany , India and Japan have been insisting on UN reform and the expansion of the Security Council. In May 2005, they proposed a draft resolution to the UN General Assembly that would increase the number of members of the Security Council from 15 to 25, and the number of countries sitting there permanently from five to 11.

The expansion of the Security Council is opposed by China , the USA , Russia , France and the United Kingdom (that is, all permanent members). Washington, in principle, objects to an increase in the number of members of the Security Council ^{[approx. 2]} , as this will complicate the decision-making process.

On June 9, 2005, the Fourth introduced a revised draft resolution to the UN General Assembly, according to which new permanent members of the UN Security Council will be deprived of their veto for the next 15 years.

The issue of expanding the UN Security Council was unofficially discussed at the G8 Summit on July 6-8, 2005 in Gleneagles ( Scotland ).

The Security Council is often criticized because of the veto power of its permanent members. Any important decision causing any damage to the permanent member country may be blocked, which has repeatedly taken place.

The United States and the Russian Federation are record holders in the application of the veto right - from 1991 to 2015, the United States used the veto right 14 times ^[13] , the Russian Federation - 13 times ^[14] . In 2015, the international human rights organization Amnesty International called on five permanent members of the Security Council to voluntarily renounce the right to veto decisions on genocide and mass killings of civilians. ^[15] At the same time, the head of Amnesty International Salil Shetti stated that permanent members of the Security Council use the veto to advance their own political interests instead of taking measures to protect civilians in military conflicts. ^[16]

Notes

Footnotes

• UN Security Council website
• Security Council Membership Database since 1946
• Veto in the UN Security Council
• UN Security Council Meetings and Decisions
• Security Council Resolutions
• Statements by the President of the Security Council
• Security Council provisional rules of procedure