LESSON 23 - THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY

Hello, thank you for joining me on my YouTube channel. My name is Christiana Sagie. On this channel, I will be teaching about international law and these teachings will be in the form of short weekly lecture series. Over time, I will be surfacing varied concepts of international law. When and where applicable, these concepts will be analyzed and brought to you as it relates to current trends in international law as they arise. At the end of this lecture, you will find the transcript of the lecture in the link below. Also, for current trend and analysis in international law, you can subscribe to my blog. All the details you will find in the comment section below. For the 23rd lecture in this lecture series, we will be exploring one of the the General Assembly. Article 7 of the United Nations Charter establishes the principal organs of the United Nations and they are A, a General Assembly, B, a Security Council, C, an Economic and Social Council, D, a Trusteeship Council, E, an International Court of Justice, and F, a Secretariat. In this lesson, we will be discussing the General Assembly and in doing this, we will look at its composition, its functions and powers, and its mode of operation. So let's dive in. Recall that in our previous lessons, we mentioned that the Charter of the United Nations, the constitutive instrument of the United Nations, is always the first point of reference when it comes to the affairs of the United Nations. Essentially, Chapter 4 of the United Nations Charter addresses the composition, functions, powers, voting rights and procedures of the General Assembly. In a little while, we will unpack all of this. The General Assembly functions as the main deliberative, policy-making and representative organ of the United Nations. Its powers and functions are spelt out in Article 10 to 17 of the United Nations Charter. Its functions range from making recommendations for international issues with political, economic, humanitarian, social and legal dimensions to administrative issues such as the appointment of the Secretary General, the consideration and approval of budgets for specialized agencies, as well as the financial assessment of each of the Member States. With respect to its composition, Article 9 of the United Nations Charter states that the General Assembly shall consist of all members of the United Nations. As we mentioned in Lesson 22, the United Nations has 193 Member States. Representatives of each of these Member States make up the General Assembly. Also, the General Assembly may grant observer status to international organizations, non-member states of the United Nations or other entities. Observer status can be temporary or permanent. At the moment, there are two non-member states, the Holy See and the State of Palestine, that have received permanent observer status. What distinguishes an observer from a member is the right to vote on resolutions or decisions of the General Assembly. Essentially, only members possess voting rights. The place of an entity with an observer status is limited to observation and speaking and generally lacks the capacity to vote. According to Article 18 of the United Nations Charter, each of the 193 members has one vote. Where issues being deliberated are designated important, the quorum required is two-thirds of members present and voting. Decisions on other questions are made by a simple majority. Such important issues requiring a two-third majority include recommendations with respect to the maintenance of international peace and security, the election of non-permanent members of the Security Council, the election of the members of the Economic and Social Council, the election of members of the Trusteeship Council in accordance with Paragraph 1c of Article 86, the admission of new members to the United Nations, the suspension of the rights and privileges of membership, the expulsion of members, questions relating to the operation of the trusteeship system, and bodily questions. The General Assembly functions through its subsidiary organs which receive legitimacy from Article 22 of the United Nations Charter. These subsidiary organs present as committees, commissions, and boards. There are however six main committees that discuss specific substantive issues on the session's agenda and provide recommendations to the Plenary of Assembly. These committees are the first committee, the Disarmament and International Security Committee, the second committee, the Economic and Financial Committee, the third committee, the Social, Humanitarian, and Cultural Committee, the fourth committee, the Special Political and Decolonization Committee, the fifth committee, the Administrative and Budgetary Committee, and the sixth committee, which is the Legal Committee. Every year starting on the third Tuesday of September, a new General Assembly session begins. Three months before every session, 28 members of the General Committee are elected. They are the President, 21 Vice Presidents, and six chairs of the main committees that we already mentioned above. The General Committee saddled with the responsibility of recommending the adoption and allocation of agenda items and work organization to the General Assembly. According to Article 20 of the United Nations Charter, the General Assembly shall meet in regular annual sessions. These sessions start in September. Within the regular sessions is the General Debate on the week following the official opening of the session. During the course of the General Debate, every member state is given an opportunity to raise issues that are important to them. According to Article 20 of the United Nations Charter, special sessions shall also be convoked at the request of the Security Council or by majority of the members of the United Nations. The function of special sessions is to address extremely important and sensitive topics. Since the formation of the United Nations, there have been only 31 special sessions. On June 2nd to 4th, 2021, the General Assembly will be holding a 32nd special session against corruption conveyed by the General Assembly. According to Resolution 377A5, where disagreements occur among members of the Security Council such that the Security Council is unable to make a decision, then an emergency session may be conveyed by the General Assembly in order to make recommendation to member states for collective measures. An emergency special session is conveyed at the request of at least seven members of the Security Council or by a of the member states. As the name implies, if the quorum to convey the emergency special session is reached, it must be conveyed within 24 hours because it is deemed an emergency. To this day, there have only been 10 emergency special sessions conveyed. In this lesson, we have captured Chapter 4 of the United Nations Charter and addressed the composition, functions, powers, procedure of the United Nations Assembly and voting rights of member states. For further reading, I have created a hyperlink to the resolutions relating to the 31st special session and the resolution defining emergency special session. In our next lesson, we will be exploring another organ of the United Nations, the Security Council. So I want to say thank you very much for joining in. Remember to like, share, subscribe, leave your comments in the comment section below and hit the notification bell so that you are notified when there is a new video. We would also like to connect with you on Facebook and Twitter. Let us know the content you would like to see. Thank you.