BPSC 70th CCE Prelims General Studies · Question 32 of 143

Correct — D, 3. On 18 April 2024 the Security Council put to a vote an Algeria-sponsored draft recommending to the General Assembly that the State of Palestine be admitted to membership of the United Nations. The recorded vote was 12 in favour, 1 against and 2 abstentions. The single negative vote was cast by the United States, and because the United States is a permanent member that vote operated as a veto; the two abstentions were the United Kingdom and Switzerland. The stem asks for the members who 'either rejected or abstained', so the arithmetic is 1 + 2 = 3. Two features of the tally are worth holding on to. First, the draft cleared the procedural threshold comfortably — Article 27(3) of the Charter needs nine affirmative votes out of fifteen, and it had twelve — so the proposal did not fail for want of support; it failed on one permanent member's negative vote. Second, an abstention by a permanent member is not a veto: had the United Kingdom voted against instead of abstaining, the outcome would have been the same, but had the United States abstained, the recommendation would have carried. The question is really testing whether a candidate can separate the three ways a Council member can decline to back a draft — vote against, abstain, or be absent — and then add only the first two, which is why 12 (the 'in favour' figure) and 2 (the abstentions alone) are the numbers the setter expects a careless reader to reach for.

• (a)2 — This is the abstention count on its own — the United Kingdom and Switzerland. It is the commonest error because news headlines led with 'the US vetoed' and reported the abstentions separately, so a reader who remembers the two abstainers forgets to add the one negative vote the stem also asks for.
• (b)6 — No reading of the 18 April 2024 vote produces six. Six is roughly what you would get by assuming a sharply divided Council, but this vote was not close — twelve of the fifteen members backed the draft, which is why the veto rather than the arithmetic decided it.
• (c)5 — Five is the number of permanent members of the Security Council, and the option is placed to catch a candidate who half-recalls 'the P5' and assumes the permanent members split against the draft. In fact three of the five permanent members — China, France and Russia — voted in favour.

Admission to the United Nations is governed by Article 4 of the Charter: a state is admitted 'by a decision of the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council'. That makes it a two-stage process in which the Council goes first, and the Council's stage is subject to the veto — a draft needs nine of fifteen affirmative votes and no negative vote from any of the five permanent members. Palestine has been a non-member observer State since the General Assembly adopted Resolution 67/19 on 29 November 2012, an upgrade from the observer status the Palestine Liberation Organization had held since 1974. Observer status allows participation in debates and accession to many treaties, but carries no vote in the Assembly. Palestine first applied for full membership in September 2011 and revived that application in April 2024, which is what produced the Council vote.

The trap is arithmetic, not political. Almost every candidate remembers that the United States vetoed the draft; far fewer remember that two other members abstained, and fewer still notice that the stem asks for both groups together. Read the question clause by clause: 'rejected' = voted against = 1 (the United States); 'abstained' = 2 (the United Kingdom and Switzerland); total 3. If the recalled numbers will not come, the structure of the option set helps — 2 and 5 are both partial or spurious counts drawn from the same story, 6 has no source at all, and only one option can be the sum of a veto plus a small number of abstentions in a Council where the draft was known to have overwhelming support. Note also what did not happen: the United Nations did not admit Palestine, so its membership stands unchanged at 193.

• Security Council vote of 18 April 2024 on the Algerian draft recommending Palestinian membership: 12 in favour, 1 against (United States), 2 abstentions (United Kingdom, Switzerland)
• Article 4(2) of the UN Charter: admission is by a General Assembly decision upon the recommendation of the Security Council — the Council's recommendation cannot be bypassed
• Article 27(3): a substantive Council decision needs nine affirmative votes of fifteen and no negative vote by a permanent member; an abstention by a permanent member does not block it
• Palestine has been a non-member observer State since General Assembly Resolution 67/19 of 29 November 2012; the PLO had held observer status since 1974
• In May 2024 the General Assembly adopted a resolution enlarging Palestine's rights of participation in the Assembly — short of a vote — and asked the Security Council to reconsider the application favourably; UN membership remains 193

• Reporting only the abstentions (2) or only the veto (1) when the stem asks for both groups added together
• Assuming a veto means the draft lacked support — this draft had 12 of 15 votes and still failed
• Confusing the Security Council's recommendation stage with the General Assembly's two-thirds decision stage; the Assembly cannot admit a state on its own

BPSC turns a headline into a counting problem: it takes a widely reported event and asks for a precise figure derived from it, so reading the news is not enough — the tally has to be remembered. UPSC almost never asks for a vote count; it asks instead about the machinery, such as the tenure of non-permanent members, which organ decides a question, or whether an abstention amounts to a veto.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Under the Charter of the United Nations, admission of a new member State is effected by

  • (a)a decision of the Security Council alone
  • (b)a decision of the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council
  • (c)a decision of the Secretary-General ratified by the General Assembly
  • (d)a unanimous decision of the five permanent members of the Security Council

  Answer(b) a decision of the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council — Article 4(2) of the Charter; the Assembly then needs a two-thirds majority.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Since the General Assembly resolution of November 2012, the status of Palestine at the United Nations is that of

  • (a)a full member State
  • (b)a non-member observer State
  • (c)an observer organisation
  • (d)a specialised agency

  Answer(b) a non-member observer State — granted by Resolution 67/19 of 29 November 2012, upgrading the observer status the PLO had held since 1974.