How the UN Security Council veto works, and who has used it

The UN Security Council veto is the power held by the Council’s five permanent members, China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States, to block any substantive resolution with a single “no” vote. A draft can win the support of the other 14 members and still fail if one permanent member votes against it. Abstaining does not count as a veto; only a negative vote does.

Below we explain how voting works, where the veto came from, how often it has been used, and what other countries have tried to do about it.

How Security Council voting works

The Security Council has 15 members. Five are permanent, often called the P5. The other ten are elected by the UN General Assembly for two-year terms, with five seats changing each year. As of October 2026, the elected members due to sit on the Council in 2027 are Bahrain, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Latvia and Liberia, whose terms end in December 2027, and Austria, Kyrgyzstan, Portugal, Trinidad and Tobago and Zimbabwe, which were elected in June 2026 for 2027–28.

Every member has one vote, and Article 27 of the UN Charter sets out two kinds of decision:

• Procedural decisions need nine votes in favour. The veto does not apply to them.
• All other decisions also need nine votes in favour, but these must include “the concurring votes of the permanent members”. This is where the veto lies.

In practice, “concurring” has come to mean “not voting against”. In its 1971 Namibia opinion, the International Court of Justice noted that a permanent member’s voluntary abstention had long been treated as no bar to a resolution’s adoption. The Charter also says that a party to a dispute should abstain on certain decisions about peaceful settlement, although Security Council Report has found that this rule has been applied inconsistently since 1946.

What the veto can block

Because only procedural matters are exempt, the veto reaches the Council’s most important work. A permanent member can stop:

• binding sanctions and the creation of peacekeeping operations;
• the admission of new UN member states, or the expulsion of existing ones;
• the Council’s recommendation of a candidate for UN Secretary-General;
• amendments to the UN Charter, which must be ratified by all five permanent members.

The veto applies only in the Security Council. In the General Assembly, where every UN member state sits, each country has one vote and decisions are taken by majority, with two-thirds needed on important questions.

Where the veto came from

The veto was built into the UN from the start. The Dumbarton Oaks talks of 1944, which drew up proposals for the new organisation, failed to agree how the Security Council would vote, according to Encyclopaedia Britannica. The question was settled at the Yalta Conference in February 1945. A US paper presented there on 6 February, published by the US State Department’s Office of the Historian, proposed that procedural decisions would need seven votes and all other decisions seven votes including the concurring votes of the permanent members, with a party to a dispute abstaining on certain decisions. According to the State Department’s history of the UN’s founding, Roosevelt and Stalin also agreed at Yalta that the veto would not prevent the Council from discussing an issue.

That structure carried through to the Charter agreed at the San Francisco conference later in 1945. Since the Council was enlarged from 11 to 15 members, the threshold has been nine votes rather than seven.

The result was a Council in which any one of the five permanent members can stop it acting on a substantive question.

How often the UN Security Council veto has been used

The first veto was cast by the Soviet Union on 16 February 1946, on a question about foreign troops in Lebanon and Syria. Since then the veto has been used close to 300 times. Running totals differ slightly between compilers, depending on cut-off dates and how joint vetoes are counted, but Security Council Report and other trackers show a clear pattern:

• Russia, including the Soviet Union, has cast well over 100 vetoes, the most of any member. Since 2011 a large share of Russia’s and China’s vetoes have concerned Syria.
• The United States has cast more than 80, starting in 1970 over Rhodesia. Most of its recent vetoes have related to Israel and the Palestinians, including an April 2024 veto of a draft recommending full UN membership for Palestine.
• The United Kingdom has cast 29, the first in October 1956 during the Suez crisis.
• France has cast 16.
• China has cast relatively few, though its use has risen since 2011. Beijing’s first veto, in August 1972, blocked Bangladesh’s admission to the UN; an earlier veto in 1955 was cast by the Republic of China, which then held the seat.

Neither Britain nor France has used the veto since December 1989. Northeastern University’s news service points out that most Council resolutions still pass by consensus or majority, so the veto is used less often than headlines might suggest.

The veto and choosing the next Secretary-General

The veto is in the spotlight this autumn because the UN is choosing a successor to Secretary-General António Guterres, whose term ends at the end of 2026. The General Assembly appoints the Secretary-General, but only on the Security Council’s recommendation.

The Council narrows the field through private “straw polls”, in which members mark each candidate as “encouraged”, “discouraged” or “no opinion expressed”. To be recommended, a candidate needs at least nine “encouraged” votes and no “discouraged” vote from a permanent member, which works as an informal veto. The Council held its sixth straw poll on 16 October 2026, with seven candidates still in the race at that point, according to China’s Xinhua news agency. Straw poll results are not officially published, and Guterres’s successor is due to take office on 1 January 2027.

Attempts to limit or work around the veto

Changing the veto formally would mean amending the Charter, which the permanent members themselves would have to ratify. Reformers have therefore tried other routes:

• Uniting for Peace (1950): General Assembly resolution 377 A, adopted on 3 November 1950, lets the Assembly take up a threat to peace when the Council fails to act because its permanent members cannot agree. It was used in 1956, after British and French vetoes during the Suez crisis, when an emergency session of the Assembly called for a ceasefire.
• The 2022 “veto initiative”: on 26 April 2022 the General Assembly decided that it must hold a debate within ten working days whenever a veto is cast in the Security Council. Westferry Times has covered General Assembly votes on Ukraine held after the Council was unable to act.
• Voluntary restraint: a code of conduct drawn up by the Accountability, Coherence and Transparency (ACT) group, a cross-regional group of smaller states launched in 2013, urges permanent members to refrain voluntarily from using the veto in situations involving mass atrocity crimes. By January 2020 it had 120 supporters, including France and the UK. A separate initiative launched by France and Mexico in 2014, calling on the permanent members to pledge veto restraint, has also been backed by the UK.

Views on the veto remain sharply divided. A Security Council report cited by Northeastern University’s news service says permanent members use it to defend their national interests, uphold a foreign policy principle or promote an issue of special importance to them. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, addressing the Council in April 2022, accused Russia of abusing its veto and urged the Council to act over the invasion of his country. Fiona Creed, a Northeastern professor, has said the veto may sit uneasily with democratic principles, while noting that the UN is an assembly of sovereign states rather than a democracy.

Frequently asked questions

Which countries have a veto at the UN?

Only the five permanent members of the Security Council: China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Does abstaining count as a veto?

No. A permanent member that abstains does not block a resolution. Only a vote against counts as a veto.

When did the UK last use its veto?

In December 1989. Neither the UK nor France has cast a veto since then.

Can the veto be abolished?

Only by amending the UN Charter, and any amendment needs ratification by all five permanent members, so each of them could block its own loss of the veto.

Sources: Security Council Report, The Veto (accessed October 2026); United Nations, Charter of the United Nations (full text) (accessed October 2026); UN Dag Hammarskjöld Library, Security Council veto list (accessed October 2026); International Court of Justice, Summary of the Namibia advisory opinion (21 June 1971); Security Council Report, In Hindsight: Obligatory Abstentions (April 2014); Encyclopaedia Britannica, Dumbarton Oaks Conference (accessed October 2026); US Department of State, Office of the Historian, Statement on the American Position on Voting in the Council (6 February 1945); US Department of State, Office of the Historian, The United Nations (accessed October 2026); UN News, US vetoes Palestine’s request for full UN membership (18 April 2024); UN Digital Library, Uniting for peace, resolution 377 (V) (3 November 1950); United Nations, Stories from the UN Archive: the UN’s first peacekeeping force (20 May 2024); UN General Assembly, Resolution 76/262 on a standing mandate for a debate when a veto is cast (26 April 2022); Northeastern Global News, The shackles of the United Nations Security Council veto, explained (14 April 2022); CGTN/Xinhua, UNSC holds 6th straw poll on secretary-general candidates (17 October 2026); Free Press Journal, UN General Assembly elects 5 nations to Security Council for 2027–28 term (4 June 2026).