List of members of the United Nations Security Council

Permanent members

Non-permanent members

The ten non-permanent seats have the following distribution:

• African Group: 3 members
• Asia-Pacific Group: 2 members
• Eastern European Group: 1 member
• Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC): 2 members
• Western European and Others Group (WEOG): 2 members

In addition, one of the five African/Asian seats is an Arab country, alternating between the two groups. This rule was added in 1967 for it to be applied beginning with 1968.

Electoral timetable

* The representative of Arab nations alternates between these two spaces.

The odd/even distribution was effectively decided by the January 1946 and December 1965 elections (the first ever election, and the first election after the expansion of seats). For each of the six and four members in the newly created seats, the UN General Assembly voted to grant either a 1-year or 2-year term.

From 1946 to 1965, the Security Council had six non-permanent members. Due to a lack of African and Asian member states, the seats had the following distribution:

• Latin America: 2 members
• Commonwealth of Nations: 1 member
• Eastern Europe: 1 member
• Middle East: 1 member
• Western Europe: 1 member

As decolonization increased the number of Asian and African member states without a group, they began to contest other seats: Ivory Coast substituted a member of the Commonwealth in 1964-1965, the Eastern European seat regularly included Asian countries from 1956, Liberia took the place of a Western European country in 1961, and Mali successfully contested the Middle Eastern seat in December 1964 (the Security Council would be expanded before Mali's term began).

An amendment to the UN Charter ratified in 1965 increased the number of non-permanent seats to 10, and the Regional Groups were formalized. The amendment effectively created three African seats and one Asian seat (if treating the Commonwealth seat as a WEOG seat and the Middle Eastern seat as an Asian seat[lower-alpha 1]).

This list contains the 138 United Nations member states so far elected to the United Nations Security Council, including the five permanent members, all listed by number of years each country has so far spent on the UNSC. Of all the members, 6 have so far ceased to exist, leaving the list with 132 modern nations. These, combined with the 61 modern nations that have never been elected to the UNSC to date (see Non-members, below), make up the 193 current members of the UN.

Years on the Security Council, as of 2024, including current year where relevant :

The following countries have made known their applications for future United Nations Security Council membership:

The United Nations Charter requires that elections to the Security Council take into account "the contribution of Members...to the maintenance of international peace and security". As a result, many nations, small or otherwise, have never been on the Security Council. The following list is a summary of all countries, currently 61 modern nations[26] and three historical ones, that have never been a member of the United Nations Security Council. The three historical UN members listed are Tanganyika, Zanzibar, and the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro.

• United Nations Regional Groups
• Member states of the United Nations
• List of members of the United Nations Economic and Social Council
• List of members of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights