The United Nations Security Council (Security Council) is the sole body entrusted with maintaining global peace and security. It has core prerogatives in the UN Charter, including establishing international peacekeeping operations, imposing international sanctions and authorizing military action. It has five permanent members – China, France, Russia, the UK and the USA – and 10 non-permanent members elected on a regional basis to serve two-year terms. The permanent members exercise their power of veto, granted exclusively to them under the UN Charter, to block adoption of any resolution they deem to be contrary to their national interests.
A resolution is a legally binding document that contains one or more proposals, recommendations or decisions. The adopted resolutions are published individually as consecutively numbered documents and included in annual compilations of Resolutions and Decisions. Resolutions are usually voted on and passed in open formal meetings of the Security Council. The results are recorded in the meeting record.
Resolutions are usually accompanied by press statements that contain the text of the resolution or a summary of it, and may include explanations of votes and explanations of abstentions. Further information on a specific resolution may also be found in other sources such as informal meetings outside the Security Council, statements by individual delegations in right of reply or in explanation of vote before/after, edelegate websites, Permanent Mission websites, online news and social media, and databases such as Diplomatic Pulse. Occasionally a resolution will be preceded by a presidential statement.