What Is the UN General Assembly?

Introduction

Since its inception, the UN General Assembly, also known as UNGA, has been a forum for lofty declarations, sometimes audacious rhetoric, and rigorous debate over the world’s most vexing issues, including poverty, development, peace, and security. As the most representative organ of the 193-member United Nations, the assembly holds a general debate in the organization’s New York headquarters from September to December and convenes special sessions at other times to address a range of issues.

The seventy-eighth General Assembly session, in 2023, will focus on the theme of “peace, prosperity, progress, and sustainability.” It will include a summit on the SDGs, a sweeping initiative that sets targets for improving social, economic, and environmental conditions globally. These efforts have become even more pressing after a summer of surging conflicts and extreme climate events; at this time, only 12 percent of the goals are on track to be accomplished by their 2030 deadline.

What is the role of the UN General Assembly?

The UN General Assembly is the only universally representative body of the United Nations. The other major bodies are the Security Council, the Economic and Social Council, the Secretariat, and the International Court of Justice. As delineated in the Charter of the United Nations, the function of the General Assembly is to discuss, debate, and make recommendations on subjects pertaining to international peace and security, including development, disarmament, human rights, international law, and the peaceful arbitration of disputes between nations.

It elects the nonpermanent members of the Security Council and other UN bodies, such as the Human Rights Council (HRC), and appoints the secretary-general based on the Security Council’s recommendation. It considers reports from the other four organs of the United Nations, assesses the financial situations of member states, and approves the UN budget, its most concrete role. The assembly works with the Security Council to elect the judges of the International Court of Justice.

What does membership of the UN General Assembly look like?

There are 193 UN member states, each with a vote in the General Assembly. The assembly’s president changes with each annual session and is elected by the body itself. The president of the seventy-eighth session is Dennis Francis, who has spent nearly forty years as a diplomat and currently serves as Trinidad and Tobago’s permanent trade representative to the United Nations. The president is empowered to enforce rules of procedure, such as opening debate, setting the agenda, limiting speaking times for representatives, and suspending or adjourning debate. 

Presidents in recent years have moved beyond the procedural role to invite UN officials to brief the assembly. This has sometimes aroused opposition from member states. In 2011, for example, session President Nassir Abdulaziz al-Nasser invited the high commissioner for human rights to brief member states on the Syrian civil war despite opposition from Syria’s backers.

Membership can be contentious. Taiwan has been denied UN membership for more than two decades due to objections from China, which holds a permanent seat on the Security Council and considers Taiwan part of its sovereign territory. In 2018, Taiwanese officials visited New York ahead of the General Assembly to tout the island’s fulfillment of some SDGs, seen as part of broader efforts to join UN agencies. 

Palestine’s status at the United Nations has also been controversial. The 2011 General Assembly session was dominated by discord surrounding Palestine’s bid to become a member state, which stalled in the Security Council after the United States vowed to veto such a measure. At the 2012 General Assembly, member states passed a resolution, 138–9 (with 41 abstentions), to upgrade Palestine from a nonmember observer entity to nonmember observer state. Palestine and Vatican City are the United Nations’ two nonmember observer states, which have the right to speak at assembly meetings but cannot vote on resolutions. 

Regime changes can also present challenges for UN representation. After Myanmar’s military junta seized power in a coup against the democratically elected government in February 2021, Myanmar’s existing permanent representative refused to leave despite the junta dismissing him. In Afghanistan, the Taliban also attempted to replace the ousted government’s representative. No representatives from either country spoke at the 2021 or 2022 sessions, and at the end of the 2022, the General Assembly delayed for a second time a decision on who would represent the countries. Neither is expected to be represented during the 2023 session. Niger, whose president was deposed in a coup in August, will reportedly send recently appointed Prime Minister Ali Mahaman Lamine Zeine, and it is still unclear whether representatives from Gabon and Sudan will attend amid ongoing political turmoil in those countries. Meanwhile, heads of state from four of the five permanent UN Security Council members—China, France, Russia, and the United Kingdom—will not attend.

Is the General Assembly in need of reform?

Yes, say many experts on the United Nations and leading donor nations. Efforts to revitalize the assembly’s work focus on increasing its power vis-à-vis the Security Council, making the process for appointing UN executives more transparent, and improving the quality of debate within the body. But the assembly has continued to resist deep-seated reforms, a reflection of the rift between its many members from the developing world, who want to retain a strong say in deliberations, and the wealthy nations that serve as the United Nations’ main donors.

In 2005, Secretary-General Kofi Annan presented a report that criticized the assembly for focusing excessively on reaching consensus and passing resolutions that reflected “the lowest common denominator” of opinions. Michael W. Doyle, an international affairs expert at Columbia University, says the assembly is “an important institution that has never quite sorted out its role” in terms of being a truly deliberative and functional body and has “insufficient deliberation and not enough genuine discussion.” Doyle, who was an aide to Annan, says that the assembly could enhance its relevance by holding hearings with expert testimony.

The assembly has made an effort in recent years to make its work more substantive and relevant. Resolution 59/313, adopted in 2005, established a more influential role for the assembly’s president by granting the position the power to propose debates and expanding the resources available to this office. In 2019, the assembly established an ad hoc working group dedicated to revitalizing and reporting on the efficacy of the General Assembly.

At the same time, current Secretary-General António Guterres has called for broader action to improve the UN system. During the 2021 General Assembly session, he presented the Our Common Agenda report, which proposed sweeping actions to improve global cooperation, including by upgrading the United Nations. In 2024, the General Assembly is expected to hold a Summit of the Future that aims to create a so-called Pact for the Future that will “reinvigorate the multilateral system and make it fit for the challenges of today and tomorrow,” Guterres said. 

Have members ever been punished by the assembly?

The General Assembly has the power to censure states for violating UN Charter principles. For example, it can bar countries from serving on UN panels and kick countries out of the UN Human Rights Council if they commit egregious human rights abuses. 

In the 1960s, the assembly suspended the South African delegation from the United Nations because the country was practicing apartheid, in violation of Security Council resolutions and international law. South Africa was readmitted in 1994, following its democratic transition. In 1992, after the dissolution of Yugoslavia, an assembly resolution denied Serbia and Montenegro the automatic inheritance of the former Yugoslav seat, requiring them to reapply for UN membership and forgo participation in assembly deliberations.

Israel was barred for many years from serving on UN commissions and panels because the slots are allotted according to membership in the UN’s five regional groups. Arab states had blocked Israel from membership in the Asia-Pacific Group, which includes other Middle Eastern states. Israel was made a temporary member of the Western European and Others Group in 2000 by the United States and some European countries, and became a permanent member in 2014.

In 2012, the General Assembly voted 133–12, with 33 abstentions, to denounce the Syrian government for atrocities committed since the Syrian civil war started a year earlier. A decade later, the General Assembly approved the creation of a new UN body to investigate the whereabouts of the estimated one hundred thousand people who disappeared during the conflict. In 2019, the General Assembly passed a nonbinding resolution condemning human rights abuses against Muslim Rohingya in Myanmar. It passed 134–9, with 28 abstentions. 

In recent years, Russia has been the target of General Assembly resolutions. In 2014, the body adopted a nonbinding resolution—passed 100–1, with 58 abstentions—declaring Russia’s annexation of Crimea illegal. When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the General Assembly called an emergency session and voted 141–5, with 35 abstentions, to condemn the invasion and demand that Russia immediately withdraw its forces. It later voted to suspend Russia from the UN Human Rights Council. (Libya was the last country to lose its seat on the council, in 2011.)

What are some noteworthy assembly actions?

“The General Assembly is not an action body. It is just that—an assembly,” says Ambassador Donald McHenry, a former U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations. General Assembly resolutions are still significant, however, as indicators of member states’ positions on a given issue. They can also prove useful by outlining organizing principles and proposing initiatives for member states, says McHenry. Some assembly actions have had more influence or incited more controversy than others:

Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In 1948, two years after the assembly convened its inaugural session, it promulgated the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which contained thirty articles outlining global standards for human rights. A historic act, it proclaimed the “inherent dignity” and “equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family.” As the chair of the UN Commission on Human Rights, U.S. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt helped to draft and pass the declaration, saying that it “may well become the international Magna Carta for all men everywhere.” Human rights issues remain contentious, however, and the HRC continues to face criticism for, among other things, including countries with poor human rights standards and focusing disproportionately on Israel.

“Uniting for Peace” Resolution. In 1950, the United States initiated the landmark “Uniting for Peace” resolution [PDF]. It states that if the UN Security Council “fails to exercise its primary responsibility” for maintaining international peace and security, the General Assembly should take up the matter itself and urge collective action. The assembly has acted on this resolution in a handful of instances, including the Suez Crisis of 1956. Intervention by the United Nations in the crisis ultimately resulted in a cease-fire, troop withdrawal, and the establishment of the first UN Emergency Force, a peacekeeping force. The 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq provoked calls from many organizations for the General Assembly to take up the issue and override the impasse of the Security Council, but the assembly did not do so.

Millennium Declaration. For its fifty-fifth session, in 2000, the General Assembly was designated the Millennium Assembly. At a summit that year, Annan unveiled the Millennium Declaration. It set forth the Millennium Development Goals, a collection of “time-bound and measurable” targets for reducing poverty, halting the spread of HIV/AIDS, improving access to primary education, and other metrics of development. The development goals continue to be invoked by many governments and nongovernmental organizations to spur aid to developing countries. Significant advances have been made [PDF] in education, infant mortality, and poverty. In 2015, the General Assembly established the SDGs, which have led to summits such as the 2023 UN Water Conference—the first of its kind in almost fifty years.

“Zionism Is Racism” Resolution. The assembly’s most controversial resolution, passed in 1975, determined that “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination.” Previously, in 1947, the UN Partition Plan for Palestine helped to create the state of Israel. In his address to the UN General Assembly on the day the resolution was passed, Israeli Ambassador Chaim Herzog said, “For us, the Jewish people, this resolution based on hatred, falsehood and arrogance, is devoid of any moral or legal value.” He then tore a copy of the resolution in half. The resolution was repealed in 1991. In 2001, during the United Nations’ world conference on combating racism, in Durban, South Africa, similar language on Zionism was introduced but later dropped.