(October 15, 2024)

In 1971, socialist and non-aligned nations in the Global South voted in the UN general assembly to recognized the People’s Republic of China as “the only legitimate representative of China to the United Nations” and thereby replaced the representatives from the Republic of China (Taiwan), which had been a founding member of the UN. ROC was out, PRC was in – and it was the general assembly, not the security council, that decided it.

Three years later, relying again not on the UN charter but its own “rules of procedure” as the human rights lawyer and former UN official Saul Takahashi has noted, the UN general assembly “voted to refuse to recognize the credentials of the South African delegation” and “barred South Africa from participation in the Unga” until 1994.