The Concurring Votes

Search the text of the United Nations Charter for the word veto and you will not find it. Not in Article 27, not in the chapter on the Security Council, not anywhere in its sixty thousand characters. The most argued-about power in international politics is not named in the document that creates it.

What the Charter has instead is a clause. Article 27 says that decisions of the Security Council on anything other than procedure "shall be made by an affirmative vote of nine members including the concurring votes of the permanent members". That is the whole of it. Nine of the fifteen have to say yes, and none of the five permanent members may say no.

What Dumbarton Oaks could not do

The organisation was designed in the autumn of 1944 at Dumbarton Oaks, an estate in Washington, in a series of conversations between the three main allied powers. They settled a great deal: a general assembly, a security council, a secretariat, a court. They did not settle how the council would vote, which was the only question that determined whether any of the rest of it meant anything.

The reason is not mysterious. A council that can bind its most powerful members is one those members will not join. A council that cannot is one everybody else can see the point of refusing to take seriously. Every delegation at Dumbarton Oaks knew this, and none of them could get past it, so the proposals went out in October 1944 with the voting section missing.

Where the sentence was written

It was written at Yalta in February 1945, in the same week and the same building as the arguments about Poland.

You can read the result in the protocol of the conference, because the leaders did not just agree the formula, they agreed the text of the letter that would carry it. The invitation sent to every government asked to come to San Francisco says that the Dumbarton Oaks proposals "have now been supplemented by the following provisions for Section C of Chapter VI", and then sets them out:

"1. Each member of the Security Council should have one vote. 2. Decisions of the Security Council on procedural matters should be made by an affirmative vote of seven members. 3. Decisions of the Security Council on all matters should be made by an affirmative vote of seven members, including the concurring votes of the permanent members; provided that, in decisions under Chapter VIII, Section A and under the second sentence of Paragraph 1 of Chapter VIII, Section C, a party to a dispute should abstain from voting."

Seven rather than nine, because the Council then had eleven members. Otherwise that is the rule as it stands today, eighty one years later, arriving in the post.

The half of it that gets forgotten

Read the proviso again. A party to a dispute abstains, but only in decisions under one section, the one dealing with the peaceful settlement of disputes. It does not apply to enforcement.

In the Charter as signed, that became the distinction between Chapter VI and Chapter VII. Under Chapter VI, where the Council is recommending that two countries go and negotiate, a permanent member that is itself a party has to sit the vote out. Under Chapter VII, where the Council is imposing sanctions or authorising force, it does not. A permanent member can therefore vote against action directed at itself, and that is not a loophole anybody failed to notice. It is the arrangement, written down, in the invitation.

What the delegates were told

Fifty nations met at San Francisco between 25 April and 26 June 1945, working from the Dumbarton Oaks proposals, the Yalta agreement and amendments put forward by governments. They were not being asked to design the voting system. They were being asked whether they wanted an organisation on those terms or no organisation at all.

They took the organisation. The Charter was signed on 26 June 1945. One of the fifty had nobody there to sign it: Poland's new government had not been announced in time, so a space was left blank on the document, and the signature was added on 15 October, which is how a country that was absent from the conference is still counted among the fifty one original members.

What happened next

The first veto came seven months later. On 16 February 1946 the Soviet Union voted down a draft concerning a letter from the heads of the Lebanese and Syrian delegations, and the arrangement stopped being theoretical.

The Dag Hammarskjöld Library keeps the running list. It records 247 occasions between that day and 7 April 2026 on which a permanent member cast a negative vote and killed a draft. The distribution over the first decade is the part worth knowing: of the 62 vetoes cast between 1946 and 1955, 61 were Soviet.

Across the whole period the Soviet Union accounts for 99 and its successor for a further 41, the United States for 95, the United Kingdom for 27 and France for 17. Those figures add up to more than 247 because several drafts were vetoed by more than one member at once and the list counts each of them.

There is one softening, and it came from practice rather than from drafting. The Charter asks for concurring votes, which on a plain reading means yes votes. In practice a permanent member that does not want a resolution but does not want to stop it abstains, and the resolution passes if it has nine in favour. The United Nations now states that as the rule on its own page describing how the Council votes, which is a decent illustration of how much of this system is convention resting on a sentence rather than the sentence itself.

The one amendment

The Council was enlarged once. The General Assembly adopted amendments to Articles 23 and 27 on 17 December 1963 and they came into force on 31 August 1965, taking the membership from eleven to fifteen and the threshold from seven to nine.

The words "including the concurring votes of the permanent members" were not touched. They have been sitting in Article 27 since San Francisco, in a document that never once uses the word for what they do.

Sources

• United Nations, "Charter of the United Nations, full text" (the text of Article 27 including the requirement of nine affirmative votes and the concurring votes of the permanent members and the proviso on Chapter VI and Article 52; the complete absence of the word veto from the document; the composition of the Council under Article 23; and the note recording that the amendments to Articles 23 and 27 were adopted on 17 December 1963 and came into force on 31 August 1965, enlarging the Council from eleven to fifteen and raising the threshold from seven to nine).
• The Avalon Project, Yale Law School, "Yalta (Crimea) Conference, Protocol of Proceedings, February 1945" (the decision to convene the San Francisco conference on 25 April 1945; the text of the invitation stating that the Dumbarton Oaks proposals had been supplemented by a new Section C on voting; and the three numbered paragraphs of that section, including the seven member threshold and the proviso that a party to a dispute abstains).
• United Nations Security Council, "Voting System" (the drafters' agreement that a negative vote by any one permanent member defeats a resolution, and the statement that a permanent member which does not wish to cast a veto may abstain, allowing adoption if nine members vote in favour).
• United Nations Dag Hammarskjöld Library, "Security Council Veto List" (247 vetoes between 16 February 1946 and 7 April 2026; the first, cast by the USSR on the letter from the heads of the Lebanese and Syrian delegations; the 62 vetoes cast between 1946 and 1955 of which 61 were Soviet; and the totals of 99 for the USSR, 41 for the Russian Federation, 95 for the United States, 27 for the United Kingdom and 17 for France, counted per member so that jointly vetoed drafts appear more than once).
• United Nations, "The San Francisco Conference" (fifty nations meeting between 25 April and 26 June 1945, working from the Dumbarton Oaks proposals, the Yalta agreement and amendments proposed by governments, and agreeing the Charter).
• United Nations, "Chapter V: The Security Council" (Article 27 in its own chapter, alongside the Council's composition and procedure).