The United Nations (UN) General Assembly on Wednesday elected Austria, Kyrgyzstan, Portugal, Trinidad \u200band Tobago and Zimbabwe to the 15-member UN Security Council for \u200ctwo-year terms starting on January 1, 2027.<\/p>\n
Germany, which had lobbied hard for a seat, came third for the two places contested by the Western European and \u200bOthers Group, with 104 votes, against 134 for Portugal \u200band 131 for Austria.<\/p>\n
The contest between the Philippines and \u2060Kyrgyzstan for the seat for the Asia-Pacific Group went to \u200bfour rounds of voting, with Kyrgyzstan eventually achieving the necessary two-thirds majority \u200band securing its first-ever Security Council seat by 142 votes to 49.<\/p>\n
The Security Council is the only UN body that can make legally binding decisions \u200bsuch as imposing sanctions and authorising use of force. It has \u200bfive permanent veto-wielding members: Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States.<\/p>\n
The \u200cremaining \u206010 members are elected, with five new members joining every year. This year, one comes from the Africa Group, one from the Latin American and Caribbean Group, one from the Asia-Pacific Group, and two \u200bfrom the Western \u200bEuropean and Others \u2060Group.<\/p>\n
Zimbabwe will replace Somalia and Trinidad and Tobago will replace Panama, while Portugal and Austria \u200bwill replace Denmark and Greece. Kyrgyzstan will replace Pakistan.<\/p>\n
\u200bBahrain, Colombia, \u2060Democratic Republic of Congo, Latvia and Liberia will continue to serve as non-permanent members of the Security Council until the end of 2027.<\/p>\n
\u2060On \u200bTuesday, the General Assembly elected Bangladeshi Foreign \u200bMinister Khalilur Rahman as President of the 193-member body for its 81st session, which \u200bbegins in September.<\/p>\n
\u2014Reuters\u2014<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":36055,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[26],"class_list":["post-36203","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-general_news","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"Zimbabwe will replace Somalia and Trinidad and Tobago will replace Panama.","published_date":"","news_description":"Zimbabwe will replace Somalia and Trinidad and Tobago will replace Panama.","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/36203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/36203\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36204,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/36203\/revisions\/36204"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=36203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}