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• Position: 1963 draft proposals for an increase in the UN Security Council's membership

On 10 December 1963, 21 States submitted a draft resolution calling for the United Nations Charter to be amended to increase the membership of the Security Council from 11 to 13 by the addition of two non-permanent members.The sponsors maintained that the suggestion that the question of equitable representation on the Council could be solved by a redistribution of existing seats was not justified.

On 13 December, a further draft resolution was submitted by 37 Member States proposing the number of non-permanent members of the Council be increased from 6 to 10, of whom 5 would be drawn from African and Asian States, 1 from Eastern European and other States.

During the discussion of this item, representatives of several States emphasized the need of better representation for the newly-independent States. They were gratified to note that there appeared to be unanimous agreement on that question. The African delegations in particular pointed out that without the full participation of African States in the work of all the major organs, their membership in the United Nations could not be considered complete.

A number of Western representatives stated that, while they fully accepted the validity of the claims of new Members to more equitable representation, those claims should not be satisfied at the expense of the older Members; for that reason, it was necessary to expand the Council and not merely to redistribute the seats. The "Gentlemen's Agreement" of 1946 should not be scrapped without the participation of all the parties concerned.

The USSR recalled that at the fifteenth session of the General Assembly in 1960 it had called for a radical change in the structure of United Nations organs, including a change in the composition of the Security Council. The present preferential position of the "Western Powers" operated to the disadvantage not only of the African and Asian States, but also of the socialist States. The "Western Powers" had also sabotaged the settlement of the important question of restoring the lawful rights of the People's Republic of China in the United Nations. As long as that question was not settled, the redistribution of the existing non-permanent seats of the Council offered the best possibilities of equitable representation for the African and Asian States. The 1946 Agreement should be superseded by another agreement on the distribution of the non-permanent seats in the Council under which each of...