Chapter 6:   VOTING

Section 1:   Substantive decisions and the veto

 

Vetoes, insufficient votes and competing drafts reveal an increasingly divided Security Council

 

Since 2000, and especially since 2010, there has been a marked increase in divisive votes in the Security Council.  In part, this reflects the polarizing nature of some key items presently before the Council – including Ukraine, Syria, Yemen, the Palestinian question and Iran's and the DPRK's nuclear programmes. However, it also reflects the fact that some Council members have become less willing to shield the Council’s divisions from public view.

 

These cleavages are evident in three particular voting patterns:

 

1) Council penholders are increasingly bringing to a vote draft resolutions which they know will be vetoed; 

2) Penholders are increasingly bringing to a vote drafts which they know will receive insufficient votes to be adopted; and 

3) It is now more frequent to see two or more competing draft resolutions on the same issue brought to a vote.

 

These trends are reflected in the following statistics:

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Vetoes

Decade from 1990-1999:  9 vetoes

Decade from 2000-2009:  16 vetoes

Decade from 2010-2019:  31 vetoes

Decade beginning 2020:  13 vetoes

 

Insufficient votes

Decade from 1990-1999:  4 draft resolutions

Decade from 2000-2009:  1 draft resolution

Decade from 2010-2019:  12 draft resolutions

Decade beginning 2020:  12 draft resolutions

 

Competing draft resolutions on the same issue brought to a vote

Decade from 1990-1999:  4 draft resolutions

Decade from 2000-2009:  none

Decade from 2010-2019:  16 draft resolutions

Decade beginning 2020:  12 draft resolutions

 

(See the Tables at the end of this article for details of these voting patterns.)

 

Resolutions which fail to be adopted are no longer cases of miscalculating prospective votes, or of a Council member having concealed its intentions prior to a vote. Rather, these instances reveal that the member(s) submitting these drafts to a vote are finding political value in publicly highlighting their differences with other Council members in this way. 

 

At the same time, Council members on opposite sides of an issue have sometimes criticized each other for bringing resolutions to a vote when they know there is no chance of their being adopted. Such criticisms usually fault drafts for containing specific provisions which are known to the drafters to be unacceptable to one or more Council members.  Criticism has also been directed against the failure to hold adequate negotiations. 

 

Some Council members have charged that bringing to a vote resolutions which have no chance of adoption has been for propaganda purposes or as a “political show”. For example, at the 28 February 2019 meeting on Venezuela (S/PV.8476), prior to the vote the Russian representative contended that

 

“the United States delegation cannot but note that their resolution has no chance of being adopted. Nonetheless, they are deliberately tabling it at the Council to then point a finger at those who are allegedly obstructing the establishment of democracy in Venezuela.” 

 

In this connection, the book (on page 299) notes that

 

“the sponsors may know in advance that a veto will be cast, but decide that the point must be made publicly that a majority of Council members are in favour of a certain course of action, and are blocked from effecting it owing to the opposition of one or more permanent members.”

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As for draft resolutions which receive insufficient votes, the proponents seem no longer to be uncomfortable at conspicuously demonstrating that they are a minority on the Council. Rather, they appear intent on highlighting exactly this point, with an emphasis on what they often characterize as their stand on principle. The most extreme case of this occurred on 1 June 2018, when the United States was the sole Council member to vote for its own draft on the Palestinian question (see related article on this website).

 

The increase in competing draft resolutions brought to a vote suggests that in such cases, one or more Council members feel that the content of the initial draft is so far removed from their positions on the matter that there is no point in even trying to influence the text through continued negotiations. So instead, they produce their own, quite different drafts.

 

Cleavages have always existed among Security Council members over certain types of issues. Historically, members have had to consider to what extent it is better to screen these divisions from the wider public, or to clearly delineate them. It seems that particularly in this decade, once several such divisions were made plainly visible through voting patterns, this has created momentum for such displays to occur much more frequently.

 

The impact of voting patterns which demonstrate the Security Council’s cleavages is difficult to discern. On the one hand, they add to the image of a Council that is unable or unwilling to act to fulfil its Charter-based mandate. On the other hand, they underscore that often a majority of Council members would be able to reach agreement on key decisions were it not for strong positions taken by other Council members. In any event, it is important to recognize that divisive votes are not creating these impasses with respect to key issues of the Council's agenda, but are merely accentuating them. 

 

(This update supplements pages 295-318 in the book. See also related article on adjusted veto statistics.)

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                                                              Vetoes                                            Insufficient votes                                 Competing texts