In Summary:
- A newspaper recently published an article claiming that Liberia has lost its bid for a seat on the UN Security Council.
- We have fact-checked the claim by consulting various sources
- We found it the article to be misleading.
A Liberian newspaper, the Independent Probe on October 14, 2024, published an article on its website with the title “Liberia UNSC Dream Crash”. The article states that Liberia lost its bid for a non-permanent member seat on the UN Security Council after the General Assembly elected Somalia, Pakistan, Panama, Greece, and Denmark on October 10.
The story was also posted via Facebook on blog pages and in some Facebook groups. Some of these posts can be seen here, and here.
It can be recalled that Liberia recently launched a bid for a non-permanent member seat of the UN Security Council at the 79th General Assembly.
Claim
A portion of the article reads: “Last Thursday, October 10, 2024, Liberia lost its bid for a seat on the UN Security Council after the UN General Assembly elected five non-permanent members for the 2025-2026 term: Somalia, Pakistan, Panama, Greece, and Denmark.”
Rating Justification
To fact-check whether Liberia has lost its bid for a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council, we conducted multiple online searches, viewing credible sources.
Our search found the live video recording when Liberia launched its bid for the UN Security Council non-permanent seat. The video shows that Liberia’s bid for the security council was launched on September 28 for the period 2026-2027. This means, the bid will be voted upon in 2025.
Rule 142 of the procedures of the UN states that “the General Assembly shall each year, in the course of its regular session, elect five non-permanent members of the Security Council for a term of two years”.
In June this year, the General Assembly held elections for five non-permanent seats. The five new countries, Denmark, Greece, Pakistan, Panama, and Somalia were elected to the security council as non-permanent members. Somalia was elected to one of the three seats allotted to African countries which was occupied by Mozambique.
Somalia and all other countries elected to the security council this year contested unopposed and will take their seat in 2025.
In 2026 two of the seats allotted to African countries currently occupied by Sierra Leone and Algeria will be open for election. It is one of these two seats that Liberia is bidding to be elected to.
While the election for these seats will be held in 2025, those elected to the seats will occupy them in 2026 for a two-year term.
Conclusion
Based on these facts, we therefore conclude that the claim made in the article published by Independent Probe and on Facebook that Liberia’s bid for the UN Security Council non-permanent seat has been defeated is misleading.
Liberia’s bid for the UN Security Council will be decided through a vote of the UN General Assembly in 2025.
