What UN is and how it works

What Article 4 asks for

Article 4 opens membership to "all other peace-loving states which accept the obligations contained in the present Charter and, in the judgment of the Organization, are able and willing to carry out these obligations". Admission is a decision of the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council, which means an application that a permanent member declines to support never reaches the Assembly. Two votes, in that order, and the first is the binding one: a recommendation is not a procedural matter under Article 27 and needs the concurring votes of the permanent members. The Assembly vote is an important question under Article 18 and takes two thirds of those present and voting.

That is why admissions arrive in batches rather than one at a time. After Indonesia in 1950 nothing was admitted for five years. On 14 December 1955 resolution 995 (X) took in sixteen states at a single sitting, drawn from both sides of the deadlock that had held them out. Then came decolonisation: seventeen states in 1960, sixteen of them in Africa, and twelve of those on 20 September 1960 alone.

What a seat costs, and what it does not buy

Article 17 gives the Assembly the budget and apportions the expenses of the Organization among the members. The scale runs on capacity to pay, bounded at both ends: the one adopted for 2025 to 2027 by resolution 79/249 of 24 December 2024 sets a maximum rate of 22%, a minimum of 0.001%, and a maximum of 0.01% for the least developed countries. Article 19 attaches a consequence to the arithmetic. A member whose arrears equal or exceed the contributions due from it for the preceding two full years has no vote in the Assembly, unless the Assembly is satisfied that the failure to pay is due to conditions beyond its control.

None of that weights the ballot. Article 18 gives each member one vote, and the assessment sits in a different column from it.

The names the Charter has not changed

Article 23 still names "The Republic of China" and "the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics" among the five permanent members, and neither line has been amended. The China seat was taken up by representatives of the People's Republic of China under Assembly resolution 2758 (XXVI) of 25 October 1971, which decided to restore all its rights to the People's Republic of China and to expel "the representatives of Chiang Kai-shek" from the place they held. The Soviet seat passed to Russia by a letter of 24 December 1991 stating that the membership of the Soviet Union in the Security Council and all other organs was being continued by the Russian Federation, with the support of eleven members of the Commonwealth of Independent States. No vote was taken on it, and the record here dates Russian membership from that day.

The two old names stand because Article 108 makes the text hard to move: an amendment needs two thirds of the Assembly and then ratification by two thirds of the members, including all five permanent members. It has happened four times. Article 23 raised the Council from eleven seats to fifteen and Article 27 raised the affirmative votes needed from seven to nine, both adopted on 17 December 1963 and in force on 31 August 1965. Article 61 took the Economic and Social Council from eighteen seats to twenty-seven at the same time, and to fifty-four with effect from 24 September 1973. Article 109 was amended with effect from 12 June 1968. The veto was left exactly where the drafters put it.

Leaving, and being kept out of the room

The Charter has no withdrawal clause. Article 6 allows expulsion by the Assembly on the recommendation of the Council and has never been used, and Article 5 allows suspension and has never been used either. One member has walked out. A letter of 20 January 1965 announced that Indonesia was withdrawing "at this stage and under the present circumstances", after which it was neither assessed nor listed among the organs, and a telegram of 19 September 1966 announced a decision "to resume full cooperation with the United Nations and to resume participation in its activities". The Assembly took note on 28 September 1966 and the President invited the Indonesian representatives to take their seats. No readmission was applied for and none was voted.

A delegation can also be shut out while the state stays a member. On 30 September 1974 the Assembly declined to accept the credentials of the representatives of South Africa by resolution 3206 (XXIX), and a ruling from the chair on 12 November 1974 kept them from taking part in the session. South Africa remained a member throughout, and a South African delegation sat again in 1994.

What membership is not

A seat and a state are not the same thing, in either direction, and this catalogue holds countries on both sides of that line. Two non-member observer states keep permanent missions: the Holy See, and Palestine, which the Assembly accorded that status by resolution 67/19 of 29 November 2012. Kosovo has no seat. Taiwan has none either, and resolution 2758 is read by some governments as having settled the question of its representation and by others as speaking only to the occupation of a seat; the disagreement is recorded here and not resolved. The Cook Islands and Niue hold no seat, belong to specialised agencies, and have been accepted by the Secretariat as having full treaty-making capacity since 1992 and 1994 respectively, while the catalogue files both as dependencies of New Zealand. The other countries with no seat are dependencies administered by members: Greenland, Puerto Rico, Hong Kong, New Caledonia and the rest of them.

Seats that changed hands

Original membership in 1945 counted 51 states, and several of them no longer exist under the names they signed. The Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic and the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic were original members while both were constituent republics of the Soviet Union. Czechoslovakia was an original member until it ceased to exist on 31 December 1992, and Czechia and Slovakia were admitted separately on 19 January 1993. Egypt and Syria held one seat as the United Arab Republic from 22 February 1958 until Syria resumed its own on 13 October 1961. The Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic were both admitted in 1973 and became one member on 3 October 1990, and the two Yemens became one on 22 May 1990. The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was an original member and came off the roster in 2000, and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was admitted on 1 November 2000.

The recent admissions come close together and then stop. Switzerland joined on 10 September 2002, having put the application to a referendum on 3 March 2002 that carried it with 54.6% of the vote and a majority of twelve cantons to eleven, sixteen years after a vote of 16 March 1986 turned the same question down. Timor-Leste followed on 27 September 2002, Montenegro on 28 June 2006, and South Sudan on 14 July 2011.