Short answers, pulled from the story.
The five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council are China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. They are also known as the Permanent Five, the Big Five, or the P5. Their permanent seats were established by the UN Charter of 1945.
Each permanent member holds the power to block any substantive UN Security Council resolution by casting a single negative vote, regardless of how much international support the resolution has. Abstention or absence from a vote does not trigger the veto; only an active negative vote does.
The five permanent members were the victorious Allied powers in World War II. Their permanent seats were agreed upon at the 1944 Dumbarton Oaks Conference and formalized when the UN was founded in 1945. They were also the states with the first and most nuclear weapons.
UN General Assembly Resolution 2758, passed in 1971, recognized the People's Republic of China as the legal representative of China and transferred the Security Council seat from the Republic of China, which was expelled from the UN entirely.
Brazil, Germany, India, and Japan are the leading candidates, and together they form the G4 nations, which mutually support each other's bids. In 2024, the United States also proposed creating two new permanent seats specifically for African countries.
Uniting for Consensus is a group led by Italy that opposes adding new permanent members to the Security Council. Its members are primarily regional rivals and economic competitors of the G4 nations, including Pakistan opposing India, South Korea opposing Japan, and Colombia, Mexico, and Argentina opposing Brazil.