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Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal – Vol. 11, No. 2
Publication Date: February 25, 2024
DOI:10.14738/assrj.112.16539.
Christensen, H. (2024). The Role of Small United Nations Member States. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 11(2). 345-
350.
Services for Science and Education – United Kingdom
The Role of Small United Nations Member States
Hanne Christensen
Independent UN Reform Analyst
ABSTRACT
This article outlines the situation of small member states of the United Nations
which make up the majority of the membership. It shows that smallness is far from
insignificance. Small UN members are active, diligent, and necessary partners for
significant member states in the endeavor to get resolutions through in the General
Assembly. They work in close collaboration with and assist one another, share
insightful knowledge and through networking can cover the entire field of activities
of the United Nations. Yet being short staffed, getting through valuable information
of a heavy-written nature issued by the UN to do their job presents a challenge.
Keywords: small member states, impact on United Nations, United Nations General
Assembly, the UN Security Council.
INTRODUCTION
Information presented here is based on available published sources and insights obtained from
work at the UN intermittently during the past four decades.
Opinions differ on what a small UN member state is. Several definitions exist. The World Bank,
for instance, defines it as states with up to 1.5 million inhabitants. If this upper level is applied,
some very active UN member states could get attention for what they are known for.
Luxembourg, for instance, with a population of about 650.000, played a crucial role for years as
co-chair of the Intergovernmental Negotiations on Security Council reform in the United
Nations General Assembly.
1 Council reform is of utmost importance to scores of UN member
states, including members of the Council, as mentioned in speeches by France and the USA at
the General Assembly in September 2023. Yet it would not consider the importance of a
member state such as Sweden (about 10,5 million inhabitants),
2 which for years was
considered a major humanitarian player at the UN, as the proposer of General Assembly
resolution A/46/182 of 16 December 1991: A groundbreaking resolution that prescribed a
transition from emergency assistance to development aid. The message was to provide the
transition as a continuum of assistance measures tailored to one another. Sweden has been
hosting sizable numbers of refugees during past decades, including 277.000 refugees registered
with the UNHCR at the end of 2022. The country endeavored to improve UN humanitarian
1
See the “Intergovernmental Negotiations (IGN) on Security Council reform” H. E. Olivier Maes, New York, 22 May
2022.
2 Population figures published by the United Nations in its List of Countries by Population, accessible at.
http://en.wikipedia.org./wik/List_of_countries_by_population_(United_Nations).
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Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal (ASSRJ) Vol. 11, Issue 2, February-2024
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assistance programming for years in the General Assembly3, paving the way for a 2016 UN
Conference, the World Humanitarian Summit, and the Agenda for Humanity on humanitarian
assistance with linkages to development aid.
In contrast, the Forum of Small States (FOSS) sets the limit at 10 million, which covers 100 small
UN member states, Luxembourg and Sweden inclusive, and several important voices of African
and Asian states. The definition applied here refers to the one by FOSS and considers the life in
the General Assembly and the Security Council rather than fixing an arbitrary number.
The UN membership counts 193 member states. More than half includes states with up to 10
million inhabitants (100), the category of small member states used here as a yardstick,
defining various states scattered worldwide4. Some are rich in terms of economic resources,
others poor. What signifies them all is an ability to exert influence in the General Assembly,
particularly, more so than others in a situation of one vote for each state, whether rich or poor
or consequential. Hence, the General Assembly considered the most democratic organ of the
UN system, has its touches of differentiation. Small member states are known to exercise their
weight with an impetus beyond their size by acting in a way that influences UN matters and
decisions, though not as the only ones.
WHAT MARKS SMALL UN MEMBER STATES?
The role they play in the far-reaching decision-making of the international community, far
beyond what their size accounts for, sets them apart. They possess a diversity of perspectives
and shared opportunities and practice how to make profitable use of both, linking up with one
another in close collaboration across the General Assembly and advocating their cause in clear,
straightforward language. An example is the contribution of Egypt to the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights, where at a point when negotiations sanded up, the country took the floor and
spoke up for the developing countries, many of whom still under colonial rule, and insisted on
an article be inserted upfront proclaiming that “All human beings are born free and equal in
dignity and rights.”5 Egypt stood so firm on its formulation that it ended up as the first and
catching article in the Universal Declaration. It informed those of the two subsequent
International Covenants on self-determination that turned the Universal Declaration into
international law6. Today, this phrasing is still “a catcher,” used in many contexts worldwide,
with its straightforward language formulating people's fundamental freedom, whoever they
are.
From 1946 to 1948, the period it took to agree on the contents and phrasing of the Universal
Declaration in the newly established Commission of Human Rights, small member states
succeeded in being instrumental in defining, subsequently adopting it on 10 December 1948 in
close collaboration with and using the significant contribution by Eleanor Roosevelt, the wife
of President Roosevelt and president of the Commission of Human Rights. She was in charge of
3Resulting in many General Assembly resolutions proposed by Sweden over three decades on appropriate
humanitarian assistance to people caught in complex humanitarian emergencies worldwide.
4 http://en.wikipedia.org./wik/List_of_countries_by_population_(United_Nations), op. cit.
5 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to be accessible at: https://www.un.org/en/world-declaration-human-rights.
6
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, 1966 and International Covenant on Economic, Social and
Cultural Rights, 1966, both accessible at: https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments.
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Christensen, H. (2024). The Role of Small United Nations Member States. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 11(2). 345-350.
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.112.16539
the negotiations as its chairperson. She was the original proposer of the Declaration,
championing it internationally so successfully that it became part of her legacy to the United
Nations. The memorial of her, a granite curved bench in the Sculpture Garden at the UN
Headquarters in New York, reminds us of that, as do photos on the inside walls of the building- a woman UN pioneer among scores of men at the time. Likewise, in 1966, the two international
covenants on human rights turned the Universal Declaration into international law. They, too,
were driven by small member states to enter into force in 1976. Some twenty years later, small
member states were in action again in UN affairs as prime movers of the International Criminal
Court in collaboration with a coalition of significant NGOs, such as the World Federalist
Movement, ensuring that the Court came into function in 2002, four years after the statute was
adopted by the General Assembly in 1998. It was a quick process, considering that the two
International human rights covenants took ten years each to reach that stage. Most recently, in
2023, Denmark (5.8 million inhabitants), in collaboration with the United Arab Emirates (9.4
million), ensured mention of the out-phasing of fossil energy usage, as yet without an expiry
date, in the end-document of the COP28 climate negotiations to rachet up climate action before
the end of the decade. All this is for the betterment of humanity.
The success of the small member states in the human rights field was marked by shifting
participants in the coalition of small member states, which took the lead in negotiating the
cause, taking turns, and substituting one another. When the steam ran out of one member state,
another revitalized the process by bringing new energy to the fore as needed.
The International Peace Institute, a part of the UN family, issued a report investigating the
strengths and restraints of small UN member states in 2014, which came up with several
conclusions and recommendations, some of which are now outdated.
7 Based on what prevails
and the observation of others, the following recommendations relating to the working methods
of small UN member states are listed below.
One: Despite a lack of resources of their own to run a mission with adequate all-round UN
expertise attached at the UN HQ in New York, in Geneva, and other cities with central UN
Agencies, Funds, and Programs as concerns the smallest section of the small member states,
they generally tend to prioritize their work strategically, develop deep niche expertise, combine
their resources, and engage actively in information-gathering and -sharing in various fora, such
as the African Union (AU), the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the European
Union (EU), the Forum of Small States (FOSS), the Non-aligned Movement (NAM), the
Organization of American States (OAS), the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), etc. In
this sense, they are a part of a system of information channels, covering a large part of the
activities of the entire UN system.
8 That setup can save them from investing substantially in
staffing and office costs. They function to some extent with assistance from others, facilitated
by close ties of collaboration, including sharing premises, which in the case of a New York
location is quite costly. Hence, this mode of cooperation can keep costs down. News can travel
fast, enabling recipients to react swiftly. That is a trademark of small UN member states.
9 Not
7 Andrea Suilleabhain” Small States at the United Nations: Diverse Perspectives, Shared Opportunities,” New York,
International Peace Institute, May 2014.
8
Ibid.
9
Ibid.