Resolutions
Each member nation has one vote in the General Assembly. Some decisions are reached by a simple majority. Decisions of the General Assembly on important questions shall, however, be made by two-thirds majority of the members present and voting. These questions include
- recommendations on peace and security
- election of members to organs
- admission, suspension, and expulsion of members
- budgetary matters.
A detailed description of the voting procedure can be found in the Rules of Procedure of the General Assembly.
Non-binding decisions
The Assembly may make recommendations on any matters within the scope of the UN but the resolutions are not binding on the member states. They carry, however, the weight of world opinion as well as the moral authority of the world community.
Binding decisions
Decisions taken by the General Assembly are binding. They are dealing with matters internal to the United Nations such as budgetary questions, and the apportioning of contributions of member states to the UN regular budget.
Documentation
General Assembly resolutions carry the following document symbols:
For the period before 1976 the resolutions were consecutively numbered. After that they are counted from number 1- within each session.
N.B. The year is not given.
A/ General Assembly |
-/RES resolution |
-/session number |
-/consecutive number |
Ex. A/RES/52/15 General Assembly resolution, 52nd session, number 15 |
General Assembly resolutions are published in different versions.
- Supplements to the Official Records of the General Assembly
- The official text is published after each session as the last number in the series of supplements.
- Texts of resolutions and/or decisions of committees, commissions and other subsidiary bodies are included in their annual/sessional reports to the parent body included in the series.
- General Assembly resolutions.
- Declaration and Conventions Contained in General Assembly resolutions.
- Dag Hammarskjöld Library, New York, has created research guides:
Key UN documents
- UN Charter in Swedish | in English
- UN System Chart
- Yearbook of the United Nations
- Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Swedish | in English
- Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action
- Statue of the International Court of Justice
UN documents and publications in catalogues and databases
- United Nations Digital Library. UN official documents and open access publications, UN maps, UN voting data and speeches.
- UN iLibrary. UN publications online covering different topics.
- ODS (Official Document System) is an full-text database of UN documents published since 1993, including digitized documents published between 1946 and 1993.
- Daily list of documents. Documents published for the day, with full text links, can be found in the United Nations full text database ODS.
- UNBIS Thesaurus is a multilingual database of the controlled vocabulary used to describe UN documents.
- Index to proceedings is an annual bibliographic guide to the proceedings and documentation of the major UN organs. The index includes:
- a list of all documents
- a comprehensive subject index
- an index to speeches
- a voting chart of resolutions
- United Nations Documents Index (in United Nations Digital Library). References to all documents by subject area are published. A collection of indexes is held by the Dag Hammarskjöld and Law Library, Uppsala, Sweden and the UN Library in New York and the UN library in Geneva.