Approximately two weeks ago, the news of Afghanistan’s deprivation of voting rights in the United Nations General Assembly due to its failure to pay its membership dues to the organization reverberated in the media. Since then, we have witnessed various interpretations and opinions regarding the factors behind this deprivation and its potential consequences. This article seeks to elucidate the mechanism surrounding the deprivation of voting rights and its impacts on Afghanistan.
The Anticipated Mechanism in the United Nations Charter
According to Article 17 of the United Nations Charter, this organization’s budget is financed by its members’ membership dues. The allocation of member states’ shares in funding the budget of the United Nations is reviewed and determined by the General Assembly of this organization every three years. Based on the latest scale of assessments approved by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 2021, Afghanistan’s annual share in funding the budget of the United Nations is 0.006 percent of the organization’s total budget, amounting to approximately $200,000 per year. To prevent member states from defaulting on their membership dues without valid reasons, Article 19 of the United Nations Charter considers the deprivation of voting rights as a punitive measure. According to this article, “any member of the United Nations which is in arrears in the payment of its financial contributions to the Organization shall have no vote in the General Assembly if the amount of its arrears equals or exceeds the amount of the contributions due from it for the preceding two full years.” However, if the General Assembly is convinced that the inability of such a member to pay its dues is due to circumstances beyond its control, it may grant that member the right to vote.
Responsibility for determining the allocation of quotas for countries and other matters related to membership rights, including identifying which countries are deprived of voting rights under Article 19 of the Charter and which countries are eligible for exemption from this deprivation, lies with an 18-member committee composed of financial experts known as the Contributions Committee. This committee holds sessions annually for three to four weeks in June, during which it reviews, among other things, its work agenda and requests from countries that have been unable to pay their membership dues for the preceding two years and wish to demonstrate that this inability was due to circumstances beyond their control.
Such requests must be sent by the permanent representation of the requesting country or countries to the UN Secretariat at least two weeks before the committee’s annual session. The Secretariat then forwards them to the Contributions Committee for consideration. If the committee finds the arguments presented by the requesting country valid, it recommends to the General Assembly that voting rights in resolutions and decisions of the Assembly be granted to that country until the end of the next session of the General Assembly.
Which countries have been deprived of voting rights?
The United Nations Contributions Committee held its eighty-third annual session from June 5 to 23, 2023, in New York. The session report, published on the committee’s website, stated that three countries (Comoros, Somalia, and Sao Tome and Principe) had submitted requests for exemptions under Article 19 of the United Nations Charter to the committee. The report noted that these three countries had annually submitted requests for exemptions for over twenty years due to economic difficulties and had received exemptions each time. However, during the 2023 session, the committee once again concluded that the inability of these three countries to pay their membership dues was due to factors beyond their control and recommended that these three countries continue to enjoy voting rights in the United Nations General Assembly until the end of its seventy-eighth session (for more than one additional year). The United Nations General Assembly, on October 16, 2023, approved this committee recommendation through a resolution, allowing these countries to continue voting on resolutions and decisions of the General Assembly until the end of its seventy-eighth session.
However, a list published on the United Nations General Assembly website in March 2024 indicated that in addition to the above three countries, three other countries (Afghanistan, Ecuador, and Venezuela) had also been subject to Article 19 of the Charter due to outstanding payments (failure to pay membership dues) for the past two years or more. These three countries, not having received exemptions, had lost their voting rights in the General Assembly. It is worth noting that Venezuela has been deprived of voting rights for three years for the same reason, presumably due to political considerations for not receiving exemptions. On the other hand, according to the latest update of the list of countries with outstanding payments, conducted on May 23, 2024, Ecuador has been removed from this list, indicating that the country has paid its dues. Thus, currently, only Afghanistan and Venezuela remain deprived of voting rights in the General Assembly.
Has Afghanistan Missed the Mark?
The United Nations Secretariat annually reminds permanent missions of member states through letters about countries that have fallen behind in paying their membership dues, urging them to settle outstanding payments.
Afghanistan’s permanent mission to the United Nations has undoubtedly received such letters. While the possibility of Afghanistan paying its membership dues given the country’s current situation seems unattainable, it appears that Afghanistan’s representation at the United Nations has overlooked submitting a request for exemption from the suspension of voting rights before this suspension is enforced. Although the current acting head of Afghanistan’s mission, who currently serves as the sole diplomat representing the mission, has stated to the media that he has acted “in due time” and hopes Afghanistan’s voting rights will be reinstated like countries that “were in a similar situation last year” until recently, UN documents and procedures mentioned above indicate that countries usually proactively request exemptions under Article 19 of the Charter before losing their voting rights.
Consequences of Losing Voting Rights in the UN General Assembly
The right to vote in the UN General Assembly serves two fundamental purposes for member states. On one hand, country representatives express their governments’ positions by voting on resolutions where there is no consensus among all member states, indicating agreement, disagreement, or abstention. On the other hand, members of various UN bodies, including the Security Council, the Economic and Social Council, the Human Rights Council, etc., are elected through voting in the General Assembly. Therefore, the right to vote is the most significant privilege of UN membership and a necessary condition for effective participation in the organization’s meetings and decision-making.
Following the collapse of the Republic government and the Taliban taking over Afghanistan, in a situation where Afghanistan lacks an internationally recognized government by the global community and the UN, the use of Afghanistan’s vote in the General Assembly has been contentious beforehand. For example, the acting permanent representative of Afghanistan in 2022 and 2023, contrary to the previous government’s traditional policy of neutrality in conflicts between Russia and Western countries, which refrained from voting on resolutions related to these conflicts, supported at least five resolutions in the General Assembly, with the backing of Western countries, condemning Russia’s attack on Ukraine and imposing legal consequences on that country. Although Afghanistan’s vote has been counted numerically in the past nearly three years, it naturally lacked the political weight of a vote used by a legitimate government representative. Nonetheless, the right to vote in resolutions and elections of UN bodies provided an opportunity for Afghanistan’s representation in the organization to engage in lobbying with various countries to garner support for what is important for Afghanistan in the UN agenda effectively. Therefore, it can be said that the major consequence of Afghanistan losing its voting rights will be further isolation of Afghanistan’s representation from the interactions between countries within the organization.
What Solution is Envisaged?
This year’s session of the United Nations Allocation Committee is scheduled from June 3 to June 28, 2024. Suppose Afghanistan’s permanent mission to this organization now intends to seek the reinstatement of its voting rights. In that case, it must have submitted its request for exemption to the UN Secretariat’s agenda at least two weeks before the start of the session for the committee’s attention. According to statements made by the acting head of this mission to the media in recent days, it appears that Afghanistan has indeed submitted a request for exemption this time. Given that Afghanistan’s inability to pay its membership dues is political rather than economic, unlike three other countries – Somalia, Comoros, and Sao Tome and Principe – which have financial difficulties, and considering that Afghanistan has already lost its voting rights unlike these three countries and, like Venezuela, it is too early to predict whether Afghanistan’s voting rights will be reinstated or not, and the Allocation Committee will decide on this matter in less than a month. Even if this committee orders the reinstatement of Afghanistan’s voting rights, its implementation requires the adoption of a resolution by the General Assembly, and Afghanistan’s permanent mission to the United Nations will remain deprived of voting rights in the General Assembly and its six main committees until the end of 2024 at least.
You can read the Persian version of this analysis here:
محرومیت افغانستان از حق رأی در مجمع عمومی سازمان ملل متحد؛ علتها و پیامدها | روزنامه ۸صبح