In April 2024, how many members of the UN Security Council either rejected or abstained from voting for the proposal to allow Palestine to become a full member of the UN ?

Question

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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.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) 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) 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) 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.

Concept: 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.

State PCS 2024 Q32 — Current Affairs PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2024 Q32 — Current Affairs PYQ with Answer