Member states of the United Nations

• 1. Introduction

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  On the 24th of October 1945, a document signed by fifty-one nations brought the United Nations into existence. That founding moment was not a clean, unanimous ceremony. Poland, absent from the San Francisco conference where the other fifty members had gathered on the 26th of June 1945, only managed to add its signature on the 15th of October, just days before the official birth date. Belarus and Ukraine were there too, despite being constituent republics of the Soviet Union, not independent countries. India signed while still under British colonial rule. The Philippines signed as a commonwealth of the United States. The list of original members is, on close inspection, a portrait of a world mid-transformation, where empires had not yet unraveled and sovereignty meant different things depending on which side of the table you sat on.

  How does a new nation earn a seat in this body? What happens when a state that helped found the organization is later expelled from it? And what about the territories and governments that want in but can never quite get there? The story of UN membership reaches from Cold War backroom deals to a single letter from Boris Yeltsin that transferred one of the most powerful seats in global diplomacy overnight.

• 2. The Price of Admission

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  Chapter II, Article 4 of the United Nations Charter sets the terms plainly: membership is open to all states willing to accept the charter's obligations and capable of carrying them out. But the gatekeeping mechanism is more intricate than that language suggests. Any application for membership must first receive affirmative votes from at least nine of the fifteen members of the Security Council, with none of the five permanent members casting a veto. Only then does it move to the General Assembly, where a two-thirds majority is required.

  The Montevideo Convention offers one test of whether a state is sovereign. The UN uses its own judgment, and the two do not always agree. Some entities that meet the Montevideo criteria have never been admitted, blocked by a permanent member's opposition or by insufficient international recognition. The practical result is that the Security Council's five permanent members each hold enormous informal power over which nations the world body will recognize, beyond their formal veto.

  Observer status offers a partial alternative for entities that fall short of full membership or where full membership is blocked. The two current non-member observer states, the Holy See and the State of Palestine, hold the right to participate and speak in General Assembly meetings but cannot vote. The Holy See has held observer status since the 6th of April 1964 and gained all rights of full membership except voting on the 1st of July 2004.

• 3. Cold War Deadlock and the Package Deal

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  As early as January 1946, the first membership conflicts arrived. The United States used its automatic majority on the Security Council to block Albania, while the Soviet Union vetoed Ireland, Portugal, and Finland. The Soviet Union then vetoed Jordan and Ceylon, arguing they were not sufficiently independent from the United Kingdom.

  By September 1949, the Soviet Union had extended its obstruction to neutral countries including Nepal, refusing to admit them until its own preferred applicants were also accepted. Both superpowers said they were willing to admit the other side's candidates, but each insisted their own go first, and neither would allow multiple applications to be voted on simultaneously. Eighteen applications piled up with no resolution in sight.

  What broke the deadlock was not diplomacy but death. The death of Stalin created a brief thaw, and both sides agreed to allow a simultaneous vote at last. A final wrinkle arrived when the Republic of China vetoed Mongolia, prompting the Soviet Union to offer a trade: remove Mongolia from the list if Japan were also excluded. The United States abstained. In what observers at the time widely described as a "package deal", sixteen countries were admitted all at once on the 14th of December 1955 under United Nations Security Council Resolution 109. Albania, Jordan, Ireland, Portugal, Italy, Austria, Finland, Ceylon, Nepal, Libya, Cambodia, Laos, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and Spain joined in a single stroke.

• 4. The China Seat

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  The Republic of China joined as an original member on the 24th of October 1945, taking one of the five permanent seats on the Security Council as set out in Chapter V, Article 23 of the UN Charter. Four years later, the Chinese Civil War ended with the Kuomintang-led government retreating to Taiwan. On the 18th of November 1949, the UN was notified of the formation of the Central People's Government of the People's Republic of China. For the next two decades the Republic of China continued to hold the China seat, despite governing only Taiwan and a number of smaller islands.

  By the early 1970s, the diplomatic balance had shifted decisively toward the People's Republic. On the 25th of October 1971, the General Assembly debated the issue for the 21st time and passed Resolution 2758. Its language was pointed: it recognized the PRC's representatives as "the only lawful representatives of China" and decided "to expel forthwith the representatives of Chiang Kai-shek from the place which they unlawfully occupy at the United Nations."

  Starting in 1993, the Republic of China launched a sustained campaign to rejoin the UN. Every year through 2006, member states submitted memoranda asking the General Assembly to consider the ROC's readmission. The ROC used different names across these attempts, including "Republic of China in Taiwan", "Republic of China on Taiwan", and simply "Taiwan". All fourteen attempts failed; the General Committee declined each time to put the question on the Assembly's agenda. In 2007, a formal membership application under the name "Taiwan" was rejected by the UN Office of Legal Affairs without being forwarded to the Security Council. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon stated that the UN's position was that the PRC represented the whole of China and that Taiwan was part of China. The ROC disputed that interpretation of Resolution 2758. In May 2009, the Republic of China's Department of Health attended the 62nd World Health Assembly as an observer under the name "Chinese Taipei", the ROC's first participation in a UN-affiliated event since 1971.

• 5. Nations That Dissolved

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  Czechoslovakia joined as an original member and dissolved quietly. In a letter dated the 10th of December 1992, its Permanent Representative informed the UN Secretary-General that the Czech and Slovak Federative Republic would cease to exist on the 31st of December 1992. Both successor states applied for membership and were readmitted on the 19th of January 1993, neither claiming sole successor status.

  Yugoslavia's exit was far messier. The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia had been a founding member, but by 1992 it had effectively dissolved into five independent states. Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and Slovenia were admitted on the 22nd of May 1992. North Macedonia followed on the 8th of April 1993, initially referred to within the UN as "The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" pending a settlement with Greece over its name; that settlement came in February 2019. The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, formed by Serbia and Montenegro, claimed successor status but was denied it by Security Council Resolution 757 on the 30th of May 1992, which imposed sanctions over its role in the Yugoslav Wars. For years the SFRY flag remained at UN headquarters while the question of Yugoslavia's seat remained unresolved. The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was finally admitted as a new member on the 1st of November 2000, after President Slobodan Milosevic was ousted from office.

  Tanganyika and Zanzibar represent the cleaner end of this spectrum. Tanganyika was admitted on the 14th of December 1961, and the Sultanate of Zanzibar on the 16th of December 1963. Following ratification of their union on the 26th of April 1964, they merged into the United Republic of Tanganyika and Zanzibar, which then changed its name to the United Republic of Tanzania on the 1st of November 1964.

• 6. The Soviet Union's Overnight Transfer

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  In a letter dated the 24th of December 1991, Boris Yeltsin, the President of the Russian Federation, informed UN Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar that Russia was continuing the USSR's membership in the Security Council and all other UN organs, with the support of eleven member states of the Commonwealth of Independent States. No vote was held. Russia simply stepped into the Soviet seat.

  The other fourteen republics that emerged from the Soviet Union took separate paths. The Byelorussian SSR and Ukrainian SSR had been original members since 1945; after independence the Byelorussian SSR informed the UN on the 19th of September 1991 that it had changed its name to Belarus, while Ukraine formally changed its name on the 24th of August 1991. Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania were admitted on the 17th of September 1991, before the USSR had even formally dissolved; all three explicitly rejected the idea that they had been legally represented by the Soviet Union during the occupation. Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, the Republic of Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan were all admitted together on the 2nd of March 1992. Georgia followed on the 31st of July 1992.

  The Egypt-Syria story offers an earlier parallel to the Soviet dissolution. Egypt and Syria were both original members, then merged to form the United Arab Republic following a plebiscite on the 21st of February 1958. Syria regained its independent membership on the 13th of October 1961 after a change of government. Egypt continued under the name United Arab Republic until reverting to Egypt on the 2nd of September 1971.

• 7. Suspension, Expulsion, and the One Country That Left

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  Since 1945, no member state has been expelled under Articles 5 or 6 of the Charter. In October 1974, a draft resolution to expel South Africa over its apartheid policies reached the Security Council but was vetoed by France, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The General Assembly instead voted on the 12th of November 1974 to suspend South Africa from the work of its 29th session, a measure outside the formal Article 5 process. South Africa was welcomed back to full participation on the 23rd of June 1994, following its democratic elections that year.

  Only one member state has ever attempted to withdraw. During the Indonesia-Malaysia confrontation, and in direct response to Malaysia's election as a non-permanent Security Council member, Indonesia sent the Secretary-General a letter dated the 20th of January 1965 stating its intention to withdraw. After President Sukarno was overthrown, Indonesia reversed course in a telegram dated the 19th of September 1966, asking to resume participation beginning with the 21st session of the General Assembly. The UN treated the episode as a "temporary cessation of cooperation" rather than a true withdrawal, allowing Indonesia back without the formal admission process.

  The Charter contains no provision for voluntary withdrawal, a deliberate choice intended to prevent member states from using the threat of departure as political leverage, a tactic that had undermined the UN's predecessor, the League of Nations. Indonesia's smooth return has never been legally reconciled with the Charter's silence on withdrawal, leaving scholars divided on what the precedent actually means.