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New Security Council members to be elected on Friday: UN official

19 October 2011 22:06 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. An election scheduled here for Friday will determine the new non-permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, a UN official told reporters here Wednesday, APA reports quoting Xinhua.

Ion Botnaru, director of the UN General Assembly and Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) Affairs Division (GAEAD), made the remarks when briefing the press on the process of electing five new non-permanent members to serve on the 15-member global body for the maintenance of peace and security. The UN General Assembly members will vote to fill the council seats.

"On the Security Council elections, they are to be held to replace those members whose term of office expires on the 31st of December 2011," said Botnaru.

The council is composed of five permanent members -- China, the U.S., the U.K, France, and the Russian Federation -- and 10 non-permanent members that are elected in groups of five to two- year terms on the council.

The presidency of the council rotates among countries serving in the peace and security body on a monthly basis based on the English-language alphabetical order of the countries’names.

The five outgoing members of the Security Council are Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Gabon, Lebanon, and Nigeria.

When the new council members are elected here on Friday, they will have to earn votes from a two-thirds majority of the total assembly members present and voting. Seats are reserved for different regional groups in order to keep geographical balance in the council.

For the five non-permanent members to be elected, three will be from Africa and Asia Pacific, one from Eastern Europe, and one from Latin American and the Caribbean, said Botnaru.

In the Africa and Asia Pacific category, two new members in this election cycle should be from Africa and one should be from the Asia-Pacific region, based on a long-held norm.

According to Botnaru, the candidates vying for two African seats are Morocco, Mauritania and Togo. The states competing for the single available Asia-Pacific seat are Pakistan and Kyrgyzstan. Out of these candidates, Kyrgyzstan is the only nation never before to have served on the Security Council.

"For the one seat to be filled from among Eastern European states, Azerbaijan, Hungary and Slovenia have declared their candidature, and Azerbaijan has never before been a member of the council," Botnaru said.

What’s more, the single candidate for membership from the Latin American and Caribbean Category is Guatemala, which has not previously been a council member.

The new council members will serve from Jan. 1, 2012 to Dec. 31, 2013.