22 April 2026

Chapter 2:   PLACE AND FORMAT OF COUNCIL PROCEEDINGS

Section 10:   Informal consultations of the whole

Attendance of the Secretary-General at the Security Council’s closed consultations

On 22 April 2026, during her interactive dialogue with General Assembly members, candidate Rebeca Grynspan Mayufis spoke of the need for the Secretary-General to have strong, constant engagement with the UN membership. She added that engagement with the Security Council members in particular was essential for the job of the Secretary-General. In this connection, while noting that standard practice was for Secretaries-General to read statements at Council meetings, she said that if elected, at least at the beginning of her tenure, she would possibly attend the Council’s informal consultations. This, she said, would allow her to speak more candidly about ongoing situations and other threats to international peace and security.

Following her interactive dialogue with Assembly members, Grynspan met with the press at the Assembly stakeout, where she repeated her intention, if elected, to attend the Council’s informal consultations, something she said was normally “outsourced” to an official representing the Secretary-General.

The closed consultations held by Security Council members date back to the earliest days of the United Nations. The initial understanding was that the Council would convene only formal meetings – public or private – and accordingly formal meetings are the only proceedings covered in the Council’s Provisional Rules of the Procedure. It quickly became clear, however, that there were certain matters regarding their work that Council members felt could be more effectively worked out in private consultations.

Because, until 1966, there were only eleven countries serving on the Security Council, their representatives could easily fit into the nearby Council President’s office for such shorter discussions. For longer discussions, the members began holding consultations in a small conference room. Consultations became more regularized in 1978, when a dedicated Consultations Room was constructed.[1] And in 1993, the holding of consultations became still more formalized when they began to be announced in the UN Journal.

As Council consultations evolved, an informal practice gradually developed that the Secretary-General would attend all such sessions. However, as the frequency of consultations increased, Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, toward the end of his term in office, very occasionally skipped a session.

At the beginning of Boutros Boutros-Ghali’s term as Secretary-General in 1992, he attended all the Council’s consultations. But then, according to Chinmaya Gharekhan, who served in the Secretary-General’s cabinet, Boutros-Ghali soon started attending less often, for two reasons: 1) “He found the meetings a bit of a bore”, and 2) “If he spent all his time in the Council how would he attend to his other work?”

After Gharekhan informed Boutros-Ghali that “the Council was not happy with him” for seldom attending consultations, the Secretary-General decided to appoint Gharekhan to be his personal representative to the Security Council, in which capacity he would attend all consultations. Gharekhan writes that while Council members at first were affronted by this decision, they ultimately became reconciled to it, or even welcomed it because it allowed them to speak perhaps more bluntly than they might have in the Secretary-General’s presence.[2]

Following Boutros-Ghali, no Secretary-General has regularly attended Council consultations, nor has any subsequent incumbent appointed a personal representative to do so. Rather, Secretaries-General, or other high-level UN officials, have attended consultations normally only when invited as briefers.

Candidate Grynspan’s statement raises the question of whether Secretaries-General are themselves entitled to decide when they will attend Security Council consultations.

Under the Council’s Provisional Rules of Procedure, the Secretary-General is explicitly authorized to attend all of the Council’s formal meetings. Rule 21 provides that

“The Secretary-General shall act in that capacity in all meetings of the Security Council. The Secretary-General may authorize a deputy to act in his place at meetings of the Security Council.”

And Rule 22 provides that

“The Secretary-General, or his deputy acting on his behalf, may make either oral or written statements to the Security Council concerning any question under consideration by it.”

However, as mentioned above, the Provisional Rules of Procedure apply only to the Council’s formal meetings, and not to any of its informal meeting formats, including closed consultations. Rather, any guidelines relating to consultations are contained only in the Council’s presidential notes on working methods.

In 2010, the Security Council members, in the forum of their Informal Working Group on Documentation and Other Procedural Questions, considered the fact that a number of UN officials, as well as representatives of UN agencies and programmes, had come to consider that they could routinely attend the Council’s closed consultations. Many Council members felt that having UN system representatives in addition to invited briefers in the Consultations Room was inhibiting interactivity and spontaneity. As an outcome of this discussion, Council members decided to limit the presence in consultations to invited briefers and their essential staff. This decision, adopted in 2010, is currently incorporated in the presidential note on working methods S/2024/507, as paragraph 57:

“The members of the Security Council agree that when briefings are being provided to the Council members by senior Secretariat officials, the number of staff members accompanying those officials in the consultations should be kept to a strict minimum. Unless otherwise decided, the Secretariat staff from offices other than those of the designated briefer or from United Nations agencies will normally not be invited to attend consultations. Unless otherwise decided, the Security Council Affairs Division of the Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs will be responsible for keeping the Office of the Spokesperson for the Secretary-General informed of matters which may require its action.”

Moreover, the language of this paragraph implies that when briefings by UN officials have not been requested, no UN system official would normally be present, that is, that the Council members retain the option to decide to hold consultations only among themselves. And on occasion, they have done so.

It should be noted that whether or not a Secretary-General attends Council consultations, there are other occasions when the incumbent and Council members get together for informal discussions. One such occasion is the monthly luncheon hosted by the Council President for the Secretary-General and attended by a representative of each Council member. In addition, each month the P5 and the ten elected members hold separate luncheons with the Secretary-General. For many years, there was also a yearly retreat hosted by the Secretary-General with Council members, although these have tapered off since Covid.

Concluding observations

In actuality, it is very likely that in most instances, Council members will welcome interest shown by any Secretary-General in participating in certain sessions of consultations. Nonetheless, in light of the points discussed above, it is clear that the Security Council itself holds the decision-making power to determine when any UN official will be present in its consultations, and that it might on some occasions choose to hold consultations without any Secretariat official present.

(This update supplements page 68 of the book.)

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[1] The Consultations Room was proposed by Japan and funded by the Federal Republic of Germany

[2] Chinmaya R. Gharekhan, The Horseshoe Table: An Inside View of the UN Security Council, Pearson / Longman, 2006, pp. 24-25.