UN Security Council

Organ of the United Nations (UN) that has primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security.

Rationale and Organization

After World War II, the victorious Allied powers led an international community of states in forming the global security organization called the United Nations. However, it soon became clear that meetings of the entire membership were neither a speedy nor practical way to address rapidly developing international crises. Thus, the founders of the United Nations created a body known as the Security Council, so that a subset of the membership could quickly come together to attend to crises and formulate responses on behalf of the entire organization. The council was originally composed of 11 members, but added 4 more seats in 1965 in response to a doubling in the United Nation's overall membership since 1951. The council remains at 15 today, although the United Nations has since grown to 192 states.

Council members fall into two broad groups: those that have permanent status, and those with two-year terms. Since the UN's founding, the permanent members have been the United States, Great Britain, France, the Russian Federation (as the successor to the Soviet Union), and China (with the mainland government replacing that of Taiwan in 1971). Collectively referred to as the P5, these states owe their status to their being accepted in 1945 as the post-war great powers (with the United States and the Soviet Union being then, of course, the greatest among the great). The General Assembly, the forum for political meetings of the entire UN membership, elects the 10 term members with due regard for ensuring, as specified in Article 23 of the charter, “equitable geographical distribution.” Half of the 10 are replaced each year, and retiring members are not eligible for immediate reelection.

Formal Powers and Functions

The UN Charter assigns the Security Council “pri-mary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security.” Although the General Assembly also has the authority to consider such matters, the council's primacy is underscored in charter provisions. Article 10 makes clear that the assembly's powers on these issues are advisory only. Article 14 states that the assembly must defer to the council when the latter attends to a specific international dispute or a potential threat to peace and security.

The most significant of the council's enumerated powers fall under Chapters VI and VII of the charter. The former addresses the peaceful settlement of disputes and empowers the council to investigate international disputes or predispute situations and recommend procedures or methods to resolve them. Chapter VII specifies those actions that the council can take or call for when confronted with threats to the peace, breaches of the peace, or acts of aggression. It goes considerably further than Chapter VI in the powers assigned. It gives the council the right to determine the existence of any such threats, breaches, or acts. Once it identifies a threat, the council can call on the parties to take measures to dampen their dispute and give the council time to consider what else should be done.

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