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Member states of the United Nations

sovereign states that are members of the United Nations (UN) and have equal representation in the UN General Assembly

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 20, 2026
Entity authorityQ160016 ↗
Source-derived summary

The United Nations comprise 193 sovereign states and the world's largest intergovernmental organization. All members have equal representation in the United Nations General Assembly.

The Charter of the United Nations defines the rules for admission of member states. Membership is open to all states which accept certain terms of the charter and are able to carry them out. New members must be recommended by the United Nations Security Council. In addition to the member states, the UN also invites non-member states to be observer states at the UN General Assembly. A member state that has persistently violated the principles of the United Nations Charter can be expelled from the United Nations.

Membership

The criteria for admission of new members to the UN are established in Chapter II, Article 4 of the UN Charter:

Membership in the United Nations is open to all states which accept the obligations contained in the present Charter and, in the judgment of the Organization, are able and willing to carry out these obligations.

The admission of any such state to membership in the United Nations will be effected by a decision of the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council.

A recommendation for admission from the Security Council requires affirmative votes from at least nine of the council's fifteen members, with none of the five permanent members using their veto power.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Member states of the United Nations” is sovereign states that are members of the United Nations (UN) and have equal representation in the UN General Assembly. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Member, states and United, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current 228-word lead offers orientation but no explicit four-digit date, so chronology should not be assumed. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Member, states and United is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “sovereign states that are members of the United Nations (UN) and have equal representation in the UN General Assembly” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q160016. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Member states of the United Nations”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Member states of the United Nations primary sources, Member states of the United Nations archive and Member research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Member states of the United Nations”?
  2. What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
  3. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Member states of the United Nations” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.