Membership of the United Nations Chapter 2 of the Charter makes provisions regarding membership.
According to the charter, there are two types of members.
Original Member and Subsequent Member
Article (3) of the Charter provides for “original members”.
According to this article, the original members of the United Nations shall be the states which have signed this Charter by first signing the Declaration of January 1, 1942 and ratified it in accordance with Article 110. 51 members are the original members of the United Nations.
Article (4) of the Charter provides in relation to the “subsequent members”.
According to Article 4, the subsequent members are those states which are made members by the General Assembly on the recommendation of the Security Council.
The General Assembly can make a state a member only if the Security Council makes a positive recommendation.
The International Court of Justice, in its advisory opinion on matters relating to the competence of the General Assembly with regard to the State’s accession to the United Nations, held that the General Assembly can decide on the admission of new members only on the positive recommendation of the Security Council. In this way, a state will be admitted to the United Nations only after a two-thirds majority of the General Assembly, but before this there should be a positive recommendation of 9 members including the agreed votes of the permanent members of the Security Council.
Paragraph (1) of Article 4 of the Charter sets out the conditions that states are required to fulfill in order to be a member of the United Nations.
These are the conditions-
1. The state should be peace loving.
2. The State accepts the obligations set out in the Charter.
3. The State is competent and willing to comply with the obligations in the Charter.
In its advisory opinion in the suit relating to the conditions on entry to the United Nations, the court had mentioned five conditions, which are as follows-
(a) The member must be a state.
(b) The state should be peace loving.
(c) The state should accept the obligations of the charter.
(d) be competent to comply with the obligations in the State Charter.
(e) And the State should be inclined to do so.
