1. The Charter of the United Nations provides in Article 27 that the voting in the Security Council shall be as follows (emphasis added):
" 1. Each member of the Security Council shall have one vote.
2. Decisions of the Security Council on procedural matters shall be made by an affirmative vote of nine members.
3. Decisions of the Security Council on all other matters shall be made by an affirmative vote of nine members including the concurring votes of the permanent members; provided that, in decisions under Chapter VI, and under paragraph 3 Article 52, a party to a dispute shall abstain from voting."
2. The provisional rules of the Security Council also mention voting in rule 40, which reads:
"Voting in the Security Council shall be in accordance with the relevant articles of the Charter and of the Statute of the International Court of Justice."
3. It thus appears that there are no provisions in either the Charter of the United Nations or the provisional rules of procedure of the Security Council of any modalities and/or criteria for the use of the veto in decisions of the Security Council.
4. On 7 June 1945, the four sponsoring Governments (China, the United Kingdom of Great Britian and Northern Ireland, the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) with France later subscribing to their position made a statement on the voting procedure in the Security Council. The statement was their view on the question on voting in the Security Council, whereby they stated that (emphasis added):
(a) The Yalta voting formula recognizes that the Security Council has two broad groups of functions:
(i) Decisions which involve the Security Council's taking direct measures in connection with settlement disputes will be governed by a qualified vote; 1/
(ii) Decisions which do not involve the taking of such measures, will be governed by a procedural vote; 2/
(b) The first group of functions will also include decisions and actions by the Security Council which may well have major political consequences and may even intitiate a chain of events which might in the end require the Security Council under its responsibilities to invoke measures of enforcement under Chapter VII of the Charter;
(c) The 'veto' is not a new 'right'. It is a right which the permanent members of the Council of the League of Nations always had. [In the statement, the five countries argued that the Yalta formula substituted for the rule of complete unanimity of the Council of the League of Nations a system of qualified majority voting in the Security Council. Moreover, the Yalta formula would make the operation of the Council less subject to obstruction than was the case under the League of Nations rule of complete unanimty] ;
(d) It is not to be assumed that the permanent members would use their veto power willfully to obstruct the operation of the Security Council;
(e) The decision regarding the preliminary question as to whether or not a matter is procedural must be taken by a vote of seven members of the Security Council, including the concurring votes of the permanent members.
5. It is to be noted that this statement was seen as unacceptable to the rest of the members and was not incorporated in the Charter or attached as an annex or even referred to in the provisional rules of procedure of the Security Council.
6. In 1947, in its resolution 117 (II) of 21 November 1947, the General Assembly requested the Interim Committee of the General Assembly to consider the problems of voting in the Security Council. The Committee first examined a list of possible decisions of the Council and classified them in categories according to the voting procedures applicable to each of them to determine those decisions which its members considered procedural within the meaning of paragraph 2 of Article 27 of the Charter. The conclusions reached on the decisions referred to as of a procedural character within the meaning of paragraph 2 of Article 27 were to be based, inter alia, on the following criteria:
(a) That all decisions of the Security Council adopted in application of provisions that appeared in the Charter under the heading "Procedure" were procedural and as such were governed by a procedural vote;
(b) That all decisions that conerned the relationship between the Security Council and other organs of the United Nations, or by which the Council seeks the assistance of other organs of the United Nations, or by which the Council seeks the assistance of other organs of the United Nations were procedural and consequently were subject to a procedural vote;
(c) That all decisions of the Security Council that related to its internal functioning and the conduct of its business were procedural and consequently were to be taken by a procedural vote;
(d) That certain decisions of the Security Council that bore a close analogy to decisions included under the above-mentioned criteria were procedural and were therefore subject to a procedural vote;
(e) That certain decisions of the Security Council, such as those taken on items 32, 33, 46 or 27, that were instrumental in arriving at or in following up a procedural decision were procedural.
7. On 14 April 1949, the General Assembly adopted resolution 267 (III), on the question of the voting in the Security Council, to which was attached an annex listing 35 decisions the General Assembly deemed procedural, hence subject to a procedural vote.
8. For the past 20 years, the Movement of Non-Aligned Countries has called for a review of the veto power. The Movement addressed the need to review the veto power in the declarations of Summits of the Movement held at Colombo (1976), Havana (1979), New Delhi (1983), Harare (1986), Belgrade (1989), Jakarta (1992) and Cartagena, Colombia (1995). The Cartagena Summit of October 1995 specified that the veto power was contrary to the aim of the democratization of the United Nations and must therefore be curtailed with a view to its elimination.
9. We can thus conclude from this introduction the following points:
(a) The subject under discussion, that is, the voting in the Security Council, has been considered previously by the Members of the United Nations;
(b) Yet there has been no legal definition of what consitutes a procedural matter or clear criteria as to what is of a procedural nature and what is not;
(c) There is no consitutional basis or agreed upon clarification of the scope of application of the veto. It is therefore appropriate at a time when the effectiveness and efficiency of the Security Council are being considered that Member States undertake the codification of the scope of application of the veto;
(d) The position of the Movement of Non-Aligned Countries on the question of the veto has been consistent since the Colombo Summit Declaration of 1976.
10. It should be recalled that in 1949 the General Assembly, in conformity with Article 10 of the Charter, adopted resolution 267 (III) on the scope of application of the veto. Today, as the international climate is more favourable to improving the working methods of the Security Council, and 47 years after the adoption of resolution 267 (III), it is appropriate for the General Assembly to text here????authoritative manner.
11. Given the view expressed by many States that the veto should be curtailed and rationalized, the Working Group ought to recommed, inter alia, that the Charter be amended so that, as a first step, the veto power should only apply to actions taken under Chapter VII of the Charter.
Notes
1/ A "qualified vote" means the vote of seven members, including the concurring votes of the five permanent members.
2/ A "procedural vote" means the vote of any seven members.
