¹ These states are listed in the twelfth and last section of the “Blue Book” published by the UN Secretariat, Permanent Missions to the United Nations, under the heading of “Non-Member States Maintaining Permanent Observers' Offices at Headquarters.” This publication is issued monthly through the Protocol and Liaison Office mainly as a service to delegations and the Secretariat. It is intended for information purposes only and does not in itself bestow any particular status or privileges on personal it includes. Observer missions were established by the states named on the following dates, respectively: 1952, 1964, 1949, 1956, 1946, and 1952.

² Agreement between the United Nations and the United States of America Regarding the Headquarters of the United Nations (UN Document A/427, October 27, 1947). Section 15 grants customary privileges and immunities to every person designated by a Member as a principal resident representative to the UN and such resident members of his staff as may be agreed upon between the UN Secretary-General, the United States government, and the government of the Member concerned.

³ Public Law 291, 79th Congress, 1st Session, 1945, in Joint Committee Print, Committee on Foreign Relations of the U.S. Senate and the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the U.S. House of Representatives, Legislation on Foreign Relations (Washington, March 1964). Sections 3 and 7 relate to representatives of foreign governments to international organizations. (Ibid., pp. 356, 358, respectively.) “Functional immunity” covers such matters as litigation concerning office leases and libel suits for statements made under instructions from a home government.

⁴ Article 32 of the UN Charter stipulates that any state not a Member of the United Nations, if it is a party to a dispute under consideration by the Security Council, shall be invited to participate, without vote, in the discussion relating to the dispute. While there is no comparable Charter statement relative to the General Assembly or a matching provision in the Assembly's rules of procedure, the Assembly's practice has been to open its deliberations to non-Members, when appropriate, on invitation from the Assembly or request from non-Members.

⁵ The preceding discussion of communications is based on conversations and correspondence with observer mission and UN personnel.

⁶ This is not likely to include plenary sessions of the General Assembly or meetings of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).

⁷ This could be a nonrecognized territory or a nongovernmental organization.

⁸ This handicap is partially overcome by the political opportunities provided by membership in the intergovernmental (specialized) agencies. An observer country may be able to trade its support for a program or candidate for office in an agency where it has a vote for support in the General Assembly or the Security Council. This form of UN politicking can open the door to some of the exchanges of information that attend the playing of the political game within the Organization proper.

⁹ Walters, F. P, A History of the League of Nations (New York: Oxford University Press, 1952), Vol. 1, p. 350Google Scholar.

¹⁰ Russell, Ruth B., A History of the United Nations Charter: The Role of the United States 1940–1945 (Washington: Brookings Institution, 1958), p. 627Google Scholar. The request was denied in each case.

¹¹ The preceding discussion of Switzerland's experience is based on conversations with Swiss observer mission personnel and the legal opinion of the UN Secretariat. For the latter, see “Accreditation of Permanent Observers by non-members at United Nations Headquarters,” August 22, 1962, in United Nations Juridical Yearbook, 1962, Provisional edition (UN Document ST/LEG/8), pp. 236–237.

¹² Most of the Members who did this moved on their own initiative. The only Members required by the Charter to maintain permanent representation at Headquarters are the members of the Security Council. (Article 28.)

¹³ Without this part of the history of observer status, the relationship would be confined to the extremely few states who either do not desire membership (Switzerland) or who cannot qualify for it (Monaco and the Holy See).

¹⁴ Both sections of Korea and Vietnam have applied for membership. Applications from the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) and West Germany would face certain veto so that these, too, have in effect been denied membership. It should be noted that the key draft resolution in the 1955 package deal asked the Security Council to consider the applications of all those countries about which no problem of unification arose. (General Assembly Resolution 918 [X], December 8, 1955.)

¹⁵ The reference here is to participation in UN activities centered at Headquarters; sharing in UN-related projects and organs, such as the intergovernmental agencies, is another matter and one that is outside the question of UN membership.

¹⁶ This has not been true for the Communist-controlled sectors of the divided countries, a fact which will be discussed at a later point in this article.

¹⁷ An exception to this almost occurred in 1950 when El Salvador introduced a draft resolution (UN Document A/1585) whereby the General Assembly would have urged the Security Council to reconsider the membership applications of Austria, Ceylon, Finland, Jordan, Italy, Ireland, Portugal, the Republic of Korea, and Nepal and would have resolved that the Secretary-General should invite each of the Governments … to send an observer to sessions of the General Assembly … to express their views and furnish information whenever consulted by the delegation of any Member State… (General Assembly Official Records … Annexes [5th session], Agenda item 19, Vol. 1, p. 4.) On an amendment by Thailand which was accepted by El Salvador, the proposal was reworded slightly to replace the specific instruction to the Secretary-General with a more general statement to the effect that each of the states referred to in the draft should be “allowed an opportunity to send an observer to sessions of the General Assembly… ” (General Assembly Official Records [5th session], p. 586.) This operative paragraph of the draft was defeated, receiving voting support from only eleven Members (Egypt, El Salvador, Greece, Panama, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Uruguay, Venezuela, Argentina, Burma, and Cuba) and being opposed by 27, including four of the permanent members of the Security Council. China abstained, together with fifteen other Members. The draft as a whole was rejected by 13 in favor, 19 opposed, with 19 abstentions. Delegations objecting to the idea of encouraging observers argued that observer status 1) was not compatible with the dignity of the applicants or adequate for sovereign states and therefore would not be acceptable to the countries concerned; 2) was in violent conflict with the Charter; and 3) was not necessary since non-Member States had the opportunity of “coming to the table” when the UN was discussing a matter of interest to them. Supporters of the proposal looked upon observer status as a way of creating an interim relationship between the UN and certain non-Member States which would be one of cooperation and mutual benefit. (Ibid., pp. 566–588.)

¹⁸ Austria, Italy, the Republic of Korea, Albania, and Switzerland.

¹⁹ UN Document A/939/Rev.1, September 12, 1949. In making this response the Secretary-General seemed to be acting on his own judgement of what the Organization should do with the declared intentions of non-Member States. If there were any guidelines or determinative factors which suggested how he should react, they were not mentioned.

²⁰ Hammarskjöld's statement was part of his reply to a question from New York Post correspondent Joseph Lash as to whether there was any procedure in the UN by which the Secretary-General could exchange exploratory missions with a view to the admission of a country into the UN. The question was based on a suggestion by United States Senator Michael Mansfield that such an exchange should be made between the UN and the government of Mongolia. The Secretary-General thought that Senator Mansfield may have had the observer arrangement in mind; hence his comment as noted above. (Press conference of April 21, 1960, p. 14 f., in UN Secretariat, Office of Public Information, Press Releases, 1960, Vol. 18.)

²¹ The same reliance on determinations made by governments outside the central UN system appears in a second criterion for observer status included in an opinion issued by the Office of Legal Affairs of the UN Secretariat: full membership in one or more of the specialized (now “intergovernmental”) agencies affiliated with the UN. (United Nations Juridical Yearbook, 1962, Provisional edition, p. 236.) These agencies are not integral parts of the Organization. Admission to them is a matter for decision by the relevant competent organ, and a country can be a member of an agency though not a Member of the UN or of other agencies. The possibility of a common controlling political line of division running through this process of decisions on memberships in the various agencies is obvious.

²² The comment has been made, both by United States mission and UN personnel, that physical access to the UN Headquarters would be impossible without United States permission and that the United States government would not issue visas to personnel from non-Member regimes not recognized by the United States.

²³ UN Document A/427, Section 11, opening passage and Clause 5.

²⁴ Discussion of this issue is of necessity sheer speculation as the practice of Secretaries-General to date has been to accept rather than to invite observers. Precedents are not always followed, however, and it is at least theoretically possible that a Secretary-General might decide, for example, that universal representation in one form or another at the UN would enhance his ability to inform the Security Council (Article 99) of any matter which he thinks might endanger international peace and security. Following this line of thought, he might then invite observers from non-Member regimes having no presence in New York. This kind of conjecturing assumes more plausibility in view of the pro-universalism attitude of Secretaries-General, particularly U Thant, and especially in the light of the latter's comments on the desirability of having observers from non-Member States. (See below, p. 277.) Such conjecturing is also encouraged by the history of the office of the Secretary-General with its record of initiatives taken by incumbents in the direction of expanding the powers of the position. Such expansion is, of course, most probable in areas like the observer relationship where lines are drawn through usage, not legal prescription; and there is some precedent for a more active role for the Secretary-General in the question of observer status. (See below, p. 275.)

²⁵ The only official documentary references to observer status which could be cited in tracing the background of this institution are the three which have been referred to during this discussion: 1) the Secretary-General's report to the fourth General Assembly session (UN Document A/939/Rev.I, September 12, 1949); 2)Hammarskjöld's, Dag, comments in the press conference of April 21, 1960 (UN Secretariat, Office of Public Information, Press Releases, Vol. 18, p. 14)Google Scholar; and 3) the opinion of the Office of Legal Affairs of the UN Secretariat (United Nations Juridical Yearbook, 1962, Provisional edition, p. 236).

²⁶ Observer missions are not mentioned in the three basic documents which are relevant: the United Nations Charter, the Headquarters Agreement Act, and General Assembly Resolution 257 (III), December 3, 1948, dealing with permanent missions. The 1964 attack on the observer status possessed by South Vietnam echoed an earlier Soviet assertion that this relationship was incompatible with the Charter. (See above, footnote 17.)

²⁷ This is a particularly strong possibility for the observers representing segments of divided countries whose governments gained observer status at a time when their political friends in the Western camp represented a majority of the UN membership. The influx of African states and the growing aversion of many Members to cold-war politics suggest that if the issue were raised directly and a formal decision made today, neither regime in the divided countries of Germany, Korea, and Vietnam would be accepted unless both were.

²⁸ Introduction to the Annual Report of the Secretary-General on the Work of the Organization, 16 June 1963–15 June 1964 (General Assembly Official Records [19th session], Supplement No. 1A), p. 11.

²⁹ Introduction to the Annual Report of the Secretary-General on the Work of the Organization, 16 June 1964–15 June 1965 (General Assembly Official Records [20th session], Supplement No. 1A), p. 11.

³⁰ It was reported that U Thant's 1964 allusion to “other countries” caused “great uproar” in West Germany, South Korea, and South Vietnam because of the feeling that he was referring to East Germany, North Korea, and North Vietnam. The Secretary-General's denial that he had any particular country in mind did not remove the possibility that this category of regimes might have been in his thinking. Furthermore, the impetus toward universality which such a statement as his can give remains, regardless of the specific intent or disclaimers of the spokesman, and could be related to observer status as well as to membership.

³¹ Referring to the apparent absence of aggressive promotion of the cause of the Communist regimes in divided countries, one UN official has commented that the Soviet bloc is “not an advocate of impossible causes.” It has also been conjectured that the excluded regimes are more useful to the political and propaganda interests of the Soviet bloc in their present status as “objects of discrimination.”

³² For the 1962–1964 period West Germany was apportioned 5.70 percent of the costs of narcotic drugs control, the International Bureau for Declarations of Death of Missing Persons, and the Economic Commission for Europe (ECE); South Korea 0.19 percent for drugs control and the Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East (ECAFE); Switzerland 0.95 percent for drugs control; and South Vietnam 0.23 percent for drugs control and the Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East. In addition, contributions were made to the intergovernmental agencies and in response to special appeals, such as for the purchase of UN bonds to meet the cost of the Congo and Middle East operations. The Federal Republic of Germany has been a particularly strong contributor to special UN projects; in 1963, for example, West Germany was among the highest contributors to such programs as the Special Fund, UNICEF, EPTA, and the care of refugees.

³³ In the case of the Korean question, for example, Secretariat and diplomatic personnel at New York may wonder what, if any, credence should be given to a press release suggesting that the two sections of the divided country are moving toward neutralized reunification under the pressure of political and economic crises at home and abroad and through encouragement by certain major powers. Here it is useful to have someone on the scene at New York, the permanent observer of the Republic of Korea, who can respond to queries about his government's real attitude.

³⁴ One exception was the country taking the official position that membership was something to which it was entitled and that the observer relationship was therefore not to be used to promote its membership cause. There is admittedly an element of national pride in this refusal to contend for what was conceived to be due a particular country.

³⁵ “Public relations” in this context means drawing the attention of Members to the existence of observer countries and to what they could contribute as Members, how they handled their economic and other problems, their political organization, etc. It is recognized that the outcome of the membership question has depended not only on the merits and actions of individual applicants but also on the nature and direction of world political forces. As one UN official has put it, “You don't pick peaches before they are ripe.”

³⁶ Article 102. This Charter provision does not say that no nonregistered treaty may be invoked in a UN organ but only that a treaty which is required to be registered must be so recorded if it is to be invoked.

³⁷ Examples are representation of the United States in Cuba, Rumania in Spain, Togoland in Nigeria, and Portugal in Senegal. The number of such services in effect at one time has gone as high as 34.