UNGA to elect 5 new Security Council members….

The elections are scheduled for Friday morning, Brenden Varma, spokesman for the president of the General Assembly, Xinhua reported.Six member states will contest five non-permanent seats. Indonesia and the Maldives will contend one seat for the Asia-Pacific group while the other four states — Belgium and Germany (for Western Europe and Others), the Dominican Republic (for Latin America and the Caribbean) and South Africa (for Africa) — will run unchallenged.

The UN Security Council has 15 members — five permanent ones and 10 elected ones. The 10 non-permanent members are elected by the General Assembly for two-year terms, with five replaced each year. The five permanent seats are held by Britain, China, France, Russia and the US.

To be approved, a candidate must receive at least two-thirds of all votes cast for that seat, regardless of whether the election is contested or not.The 10 elected seats are distributed among the five regional groups: three seats for Africa, two seats each for Asia-Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Western Europe and Others. The Eastern European group has one seat.

The five newly elected members will replace Bolivia, Ethiopia, Kazakhstan, the Netherlands and Sweden, and start their two-year terms as from Jan. 1, 2019.
The Security Council, which is tasked with the maintenance of world peace and security, is the most powerful body of the UN.