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List of members of the United Nations Security Council
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Membership of the United Nations Security Council is held by the five permanent members and ten elected, non-permanent members.
Being elected requires a two-thirds majority vote from the United Nations General Assembly. Elected members hold their place on the council for a two-year term, with five seats contested in even years and five seats contested in odd years. An outgoing member cannot be immediately re-elected.
Elections usually begin in June for a term starting January 1. Because of the two-thirds majority requirement, it is possible for two evenly matched candidates to deadlock with approximately half the vote each, sometimes needing weeks of negotiations to resolve.
Non-permanent seats are distributed geographically, with a certain number of seats allocated to each of the five United Nations Regional Groups.
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Current membership
- Non-permanent members
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Regional Groups
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African Group
Asia-Pacific Group
Eastern European Group
Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
Western European and Others Group
UN member not in any voting group
Observer states
Non-UN state or territory
The ten non-permanent seats have the following distribution:
- African Group: 3 members
- Asia-Pacific Group: 2 members
- Eastern European Group: 1 member
- Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC): 2 members
- Western European and Others Group (WEOG): 2 members
In addition, one of the five African/Asian seats is an Arab country, alternating between the two groups. This rule was added in 1967 for it to be applied beginning with 1968.
- Electoral timetable
* The representative of Arab nations alternates between these two spaces.
The odd/even distribution was effectively decided by the January 1946 and 1965 elections (the first ever election, and the first election after the expansion of seats). For each of the six and four members in the newly created seats, the UN General Assembly voted to grant either a 1-year or 2-year term.
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Previous Security Council composition
From 1946 to 1965, the Security Council had six non-permanent members. Due to a lack of African and Asian member states, the seats had the following distribution:
- Latin America: 2 members
- Commonwealth of Nations: 1 member
- Eastern Europe: 1 member
- Middle East: 1 member
- Western Europe: 1 member
As decolonization increased the number of Asian and African member states without a group, they began to contest other seats: Ivory Coast substituted a member of the Commonwealth in 1964–1965, the Eastern European seat regularly included Asian countries from 1956, Liberia took the place of a Western European country in 1961, and Mali successfully contested the Middle Eastern seat in December 1964 (the Security Council would be expanded before Mali's term began).
An amendment to the UN Charter ratified in 1965 increased the number of non-permanent seats to 10, and the Regional Groups were formalized. The amendment effectively created three African seats and one Asian seat (if treating the Commonwealth seat as a WEOG seat and the Middle Eastern seat as an Asian seat[a]).
Membership by year
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Permanent
Non-permanent (1946–1965)
Non-permanent (1966–present)
The African Union uses an internal rotation system to distribute seats based on its subregions:[3][4]
- 1 odd-year seat alternates between Eastern Africa and Southern Africa (only Eastern Africa prior to the creation of the Southern Africa subregion in 1979)
- 1 even-year seat is allocated to Western Africa
- 1 even-year seat alternates between Northern Africa (the Arab nation seat) and Central Africa (with one exception at the beginning in 1966)
Aside from the Asia-Pacific Group also allocating an Arab nation seat every four years (in even years not divisible by 4), other regional groups do not have their own subregional rotation systems.[2][5] The Arab nation seat is starred below.
The Western European and Others Group in part contains three caucusing subgroups (Benelux, the Nordic countries, and CANZ[f]), whose candidates informally coordinate with each other.[6][5] While this has not resulted in a stable rotation system, it effectively guarantees that both seats will never be occupied by a single subgroup at the same time.[1]
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List by number of years as Security Council member
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This list contains the 138 United Nations member states so far elected to the United Nations Security Council, including the five permanent members, all listed by number of years each country has so far spent on the UNSC. Of all the members, 6 have so far ceased to exist, leaving the list with 132 modern nations. These, combined with the 61 modern nations that have never been elected to the UNSC to date (see Non-members, below), make up the 193 current members of the UN.
Years on the Security Council, as of 2025[update], including current year where relevant :
Indicates permanent member
Indicates current elected member (2025)
Indicates former United Nations member
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Future membership
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UN members that have never been Security Council members
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This is a list of the 61 member nations that have never been members of the Security Council.[32] The three former UN members that were not elected to the Security Council during their membership are Tanganyika, Zanzibar, and Serbia and Montenegro.
Former UN members that were never UNSC members
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See also
Notes
- In practice, the Commonwealth seat was by then treated as a de facto African seat.[1]
- Tunisia and Morocco were treated as Middle Eastern countries due to being members of the Arab League.[2]
- At the time of election, and until 2 August 1984, the country was known as Upper Volta.
- The election was secured by Democratic Yemen, and in 22 May 1990, during its membership of the Security Council, it unified with Yemen (i.e., North Yemen) to form the single country of Yemen.
- Table shows years completed or in progress. Each term on the Council consist of 2 years. Any odd number of years are countries currently serving the first year of a term, countries with terms between 1956 and 1967, when the order of the council changed, or the three countries (Mexico, Egypt and the Netherlands) who had the first terms in 1946 and changed in 1947.
- Not a member of any regional group until joining the WEOG in 2000. Crossette, Barbara (3 December 1999). "Membership in Key Group Within U.N. Eludes Israel". The New York Times. Retrieved 17 April 2011.
- Montenegro was also a constituent state of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and of Serbia and Montenegro from 27 April 1992 until 3 June 2006, but these entities were not members of the Security Council.
- Serbia was also a constituent state of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and of Serbia and Montenegro from 27 April 1992 until 5 June 2006, but these entities were not members of the Security Council.
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References
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