League of Nations Security Council

  

League of Nations Security Council

Emblem
League of Nations Security Council Chamber Room in Geneva, Switzerland
Abbreviation	LNSC
Formation	1962
Type	Principal organ
Legal status	Active
Headquarters	Geneva, Switzerland
Membership	16 states Permanent members: China Germany Japan Sierra United Commonwealth United Kingdom Non-permanent members: Austria Belarus Ethiopia Federation of Central America France India Iraq Nigeria South Africa Thailand

The League of Nations Security Council is one of the six principal organs of the League of Nations (LN), charged with ensuring international peace and security, accepting new members to the League of Nations and approving any changes to its charter. Its powers include the establishment of peacekeeping operations and international sanctions as well as the authorization of military actions through resolutions – it is the only body of the LN with the authority to issue binding resolutions to member states. The council held its first session on 17 August 1962.

When the LN was initially created after Great War I, it consisted of the General Assembly, however this proved to be not capable of preventing the outbreak of Great War II or resolving and enforcing resolutions in international disputes. Therefore, the Security Council was formed at the end of Great War II in order to establish an international organization that was capable of maintaining world peace and give the original LN more enforcement power by backing of the world's leading powers, as represented on the Security Council. It was officially formed on 17 August 1962 and held its first session on that day to announce its formation and lay out the overall goals and objectives of the League of Nations as a whole and what role the Security Council would serve in. The organization was established while several early Cold War conflicts were ongoing, and it authorized military interventions in the Suez Crisis and the Vietnam War. After the end of the Cold War with the Revolutions of 2000, LN peacekeeping operations have expanded greatly and works in conjunction with intergovernmental organizations such as the Conference of American States and European Community in regards to both peacekeeping operations and military interventions such as in Syria (the site of the largest LN-backed peacekeeping mission) and other countries.

The Security Council consists of sixteen members, six of which are permanent. The other ten members are selected for two years on a geographic basis. The current permanent members of the Security Council include Republic of China, the German Empire, the State of Japan, the Kingdom of Sierra, the United Commonwealth of Continental States, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain. These were the leading nations that emerged among the Allied powers during Great War II. However, China was initially represented by the People's Republic of China until it dissolved in 1999, while the United Commonwealth's seat was given to the Antilles as the "United Commonwealth of America" until 1971.

Members

Permanent

There are six permanent members of the Security Council, which have the power to veto a resolution from being adopted by the Council but are not able to prevent a debate.

Country	Regional group	Current state representation	Former state representation
China	Asia-Pacific	Republic of China	People's Republic of China (1962–1999)
Germany	Western Europe and Others	German Empire	N/A
Japan	Asia-Pacific	State of Japan	N/A
Sierra	North America	Kingdom of Sierra	N/A
United Commonwealth	North America	United Commonwealth of Continentalist States	United Commonwealth of America (1962–1967)
United Kingdom	Western Europe and Others	United Kingdom of Great Britain	N/A

Non-permanent (2020–2022)

There are ten non-permanent members on the Council that are rotated every two years and are chosen based on geographic regions.

Term	Africa			Asia-Pacific			Eastern Europe	Latin America and Caribbean	Western Europe and Other
2022–2024	TBD	TBD	TBD	TBD	TBD	TBD	TBD	TBD	TBD	TBD
2020–2022	Ethiopia	Nigeria	South Africa	India	Iraq	Thailand	Belarus	Federation of Central America	Austria	France

See also

This page uses material from the Wikipedia page United Nations Security Council, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (view authors).