Updated on 12 April 2025

Chapter 8:   SUBSIDIARY BODIES

Section 7:   Appointment of bureaux of subsidiary bodies

Delay in appointing 2025 subsidiary body bureaux triggers contingency measure agreed in 2023

Through a 2023 Note by the President, the Security Council adopted a contingency measure for years when the annual appointment of bureaux of the Council’s subsidiary bodies becomes delayed beyond 1 January. his measure was subsequently incorporated into the new 2024 comprehensive presidential note on Council working methods agreed in the IWG (S/2024/507) as paragraph 129:

“. . . unless agreement is reached by 1 January on the appointment of the Chairs and, consequently, Vice-Chairs of the subsidiary bodies of the Council for the year, as a contingency measure, the responsibilities of Chairs of all of the subsidiary bodies of the Council during the month of January shall devolve to the President for the month of January.”

In terms of precedent, there was a past case of a Council President handling the official business of a subsidiary body lacking a Chair. The Security Council established the Al-Qaida/Taliban Committee by its resolution 1267, adopted on 15 October 1999. With so little time remaining in the year, the Council decided to wait to designate the Committee Chair until all new bureaux assignments were published in January 2000. In the interim, during December 1999, when it was necessary for the Committee to take official action, the Council President (United Kingdom) acted on the Committee’s behalf.

The reason the Council adopted its contingency measure in 2023 was that vacuums had been occurring with respect to the leadership of its subsidiary bodies, particularly since the start of this decade. During the period from 2021 to 2025, only in 2024 were bureaux finalized in time to be published on the first working day of the new year. Delays have occurred despite the fact that presidential notes have provided that:

“The members of the Security Council should make every effort to agree provisionally on the appointment of the Chairs of the subsidiary bodies for the following year no later than 1 October.”[1]

Prior to the adoption of the contingency measure, when past delays ocurrred, until the new appointments were agreed, no Council member was authorized to perform the official functions of the Chairs of the Council’s subsidiary bodies, bringing the work of these bodies to a halt. The official functions of Chairs include such important tasks as:

a) briefing the Security Council as stipulated in resolutions, whether in formal meetings or in closed consultations;

b) signing formal letters on behalf of the committee or working group;

c) presiding over meetings of subsidiary bodies;

d) taking decisions relating to expert groups and their reports; and

e) taking the lead on adopting the body’s annual programme of work.

Activation of the contingency measure

As mentioned above, the 2024 appointments were agreed in time for all bureaux to take up their responsibilities on the first working day in January. However, disagreements over apportioning Chairs for the year 2025 have extended into a third month. In fact, as of 31 March, the Council has been without Chairs for sixty-two working days – the longest delay on record since 1999, the year the Council first began issuing a collective note on the bureaux appointments. The 2025 delay far surpasses the second longest delay of twenty working days in 2010. (See chart of delays at the end of this article.)

The significant delay in the 2025 appointments has necessitated the first application of the contingency measure since its adoption. In six instances, Council Presidents have signed letters on behalf of subsidiary bodies, as follows:

• On 9 January 2025, the representative of Algeria signed a letter as “President of the Security Council acting in the absence of a Chair of the Security Council Committee established pursuant to resolution 1373 (2001) concerning counter-terrorism” (CTC). The letter conveyed the “Algeria Guiding Principles” developed by the CTC to assist Member States in countering the threat posed by the use of new and emerging technologies for terrorist purposes. The Algerian representative chaired the CTC in 2024 and has been expected to be named to continue as its Chair in 2025.

• On 31 January 2025, the representative of Algeria signed a letter as “President of the Security Council acting in the absence of a Chair of the Security Council Committee established pursuant to resolution 1540 (2004)”. This letter stated that the 1540 Committee was continuing its consideration of its annual programme of work and would report to the Council by 7 March 2025. This letter was necessary because resolution 2663 (2022) decided that the Committee would continue to submit to the Council its programme of work “before the end of each January”. The 2024 Chair of the 1540 Committee was the representative of Ecuador, the term of which ended at the end of that year.

• On 31 January 2025, the representative of Algeria, Council President for January, signed a second letter on behalf of the 1540 Committee which stated that the Committee was continuing its consideration of its annual work programme and would report to the Council by 7 March 2025. 

• On 10 March 2025, the representative of Denmark, Council President for March, signed a third letter on behalf of the 1540 Committee which stated that the Committee was continuing its consideration of its annual work programme and would report to the Council accordingly.

• On 12 March 2025, the representative of Denmark, Council President for March, signed a fourth letter on behalf of the 1540 Committee which stated that the briefing by the Committee Chair had been postponed until further notice. 

• On 6 February 2025, the representative of China signed a letter as “President of the Security Council acting in the absence of a Chair of the Security Council Committee pursuant to resolutions 1267 (1999), 1989 (2011) and 2253 (2015) concerning Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Da’esh), Al- Qaida and associated individuals, groups, undertakings and entities”. This letter transmitted the most recent comprehensive report of the Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team. The 2024 Chair of the 1267/1989/2253 Committee was the representative of Malta, the term of which ended at the end of that year.

In two instances during 2025, the Council President, on behalf of subsidiary bodies, has given briefings mandated by Council resolutions:

• At a formal meeting of the Council on 19 February 2025, the Council President for February (China) fulfilled the requirement under resolution 1970 (2011) that the Council receive a periodic report on the work of the Committee established pursuant to resolution 1970 (2011) concerning Libya. The normal practice, when a 1970 Committee Chair has been in office, has been for that Chair to read out the report in full at the meeting. However, at the February 2025 meeting, the Chinese presidency stated that he would not do so, but that the report would be posted on the Committee website (S/PV.9862). The 2024 Chair of the 1267/1989/2253 Committee was the representative of Japan, the term of which ended at the end of that year.

• In closed consultations on 26 February 2025, the Council President (China) fulfilled the requirement under resolution 1718 (2006) that the Council should receive 90-day reports on the work of the Committee established pursuant to resolution 1718 (2006), relating to sanctions imposed against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. The 2024 Chair of the 1718 Committee was the representative of Switzerland, the term of which ended at the end of that year.

As mentioned above, Chairs preside over meetings of Council subsidiary bodies. During the weeks in 2025 when appointing bureaux has been delayed, other than the Military Staff Committee, which has its own chairing rotation, no bodies have held formal or informal meetings. However, subsidiary bodies may schedule informal consultations in the absence of a formally appointed Chair, and this has been done, for example, by the 1267/1989/2253 Committee on 7 March 2025 and by the 1591 Committee on 9 April 2025.

It should be noted that the contingency measure provides explicitly only that it will apply during the month of January. The fact that it has continued to operate past the end of January 2025 indicates the implicit decision by Council members that the measure will also apply to subsequent months, as necessary.

The appointment process

​​​​The appointment of subsidiary bureaux is negotiated through a process first agreed in 2016 and now set out in paragraphs 124 to 128 of presidential note S/2024/507. In order to try to meet the target date of 1 October, Council members are to “start an informal process of consultations, with the participation of all Council members, on the appointment of the Chairs of the subsidiary bodies from among the members of the Council for the following year as soon as possible after each election of members of the Council.”

These informal consultations are to be “undertaken in a balanced, transparent, efficient and inclusive way so as to facilitate an exchange of information related to the work of the subsidiary bodies involved and will be facilitated jointly by two members of the Security Council working in full cooperation” (our emphasis). While not specified in the note, it was confirmed in a 2016 statement made at the press stakeout by the representative of Japan, then serving as Chair of the Council’s Informal Working Group on Documentation and Other Procedural Questions (IWG), that these co-facilitators are to be the IWG Chair[2] and the rotating P5 coordinator for the relevant months.[3]

Obstacles to finalizing the chairing appointments vary in their nature from year to year. In some years, two or more incoming members have had a strong preference for chairing the same subsidiary body. This situation can be made more difficult if there is not available an open position with another subsidiary body of equal interest to the competitors. Alternatively, in some years there may be an open position in which none of the incoming members are interested, and then it can be difficult to find a delegation willing to take on that role. This can especially be the case for those sanctions committees which have a history of contentious decision-making. Also at issue can be the relative size of the delegations of incoming members, with smaller delegations sometimes reluctant to chair the more active subsidiary bodies, or to take on a larger number of bodies. Difficulties can also occur when an incoming member is considered by some to be too close geographically, politically or economically to a country for which there is a Council sanctions committee.

Although the appointment process may go more smoothly when the five incoming members can agree among themselves which of the open Chair positions each would like to fill, this is not always the case. The decision on the appointments is, by practice, published in the format of a Note by the President, a format which requires the full consensus of all fifteen Council members. Accordingly, any Council member can prevent the proposed appointments from going forward. And in the past, delays have been caused by objections sometimes from one or more permanent members, and sometimes from one or more elected members. When the P5 are united in supporting a member to assume a chairing position, or in opposing a member doing so, this can be particularly hard to reverse.

In recent years, some delays have occurred not because of disagreements over the bureaux for the year in question. Rather, the point of contention has been the request by a member that the presidential note announcing the appointments also set out an agreement that that member will accede to a chairing position becoming available the following year. In such cases, the member has wished to have on record that it agreed to accept certain assignments, or forgo certain assignments, only on condition that it would receive a sought-after appointment the following year. Such requests have been made even though the generally accepted practice has been that a member appointed to chair a particular body will be reappointed to that body in its second year.[4]

The practice of incorporating such an agreement began in 2021, when the presidential note on the appointments contained a footnote stating that India would chair the Counter-Terrorism Committee (CTC) the following year, after Tunisia completed its term as Chair. A footnote to the 2022 presidential note similarly indicated that the United Arab Emirates would take over as CTC Chair the following year, after India completed its term. And in 2021, a commitment regarding the following year extended to the agreed appointment of a Vice-Chair.[5]

However, pushback against including in one year’s presidential note an agreement concerning bureaux for the following year occurred in 2023, when reportedly one or more P5 did not agree to elected members’ proposal that there be a footnote indicating that Japan would chair the IWG the following year, after Albania completed its term as Chair. Ultimately, the ten elected members (E10) of 2023 took two actions:

​

1) They dropped their request for the footnote so that the 2023 appointments could go forward; and

2) They joined together under Ecuador, the E10 coordinator for January, to send a letter to the Council President which stated that the current elected members unanimously supported Japan to become IWG Chair in 2024. And Japan in fact was appointed to that position the following year.[6]

In 2024, a similar situation arose, again concerning the IWG, and this time with respect to Slovenia, which joined the Council at the beginning of that year. Algeria, as the E10 coordinator for August, wrote a letter to the Council President stating that the current 10 elected members unanimously supported Slovenia to become the IWG Chair in 2025.

Each of these letters concerning the following year’s IWG Chair mentioned the expectation that in making the final decision, “the Security Council will take note of the position of the current members of the Council as well as the views of the new members to be elected ” (our emphasis). This raised, for some Council members, the question as to whether or not the endorsement by a prior year’s elected members should be seen as creating an obligation for members joining the Council the following year. This question so far has not been resolved concerning the IWG Chair appointment for 2025, and this reportedly has been one – but by no means the only – issue to be overcome in finalizing the 2025 bureaux.

There was one case in 2006 when agreement was reached on all but one chairing assignment. The Council’s solution was to issue a presidential note naming all the agreed bureaux early in January. Then, when agreement was finally reached on the one remaining vacancy at the end of January, an updated note was issued. But such a solution is normally not an option because usually when delays occur, more than one chairing appointment is at issue. In such cases, an interlinkage may exist when one member fails to win a chairing assignment it has sought, or when a member rejects a chairing assignment, which can lead to a reshuffling of Chairs for other bodies.

Concluding observations

While the contingency measure now ensures that the most pressing official business of the Council’s subsidiary organs can be handled when Chairs are not immediately appointed at the start of each new year, it is not a perfect solution. When the delay is long – as has been the case in 2025 – the bulk of the work of subsidiary bodies has to be postponed, which will confront the eventual Chairs with a considerable backlog once they finally assume their functions. The contingency measure also creates an added burden for Council presidencies which, in the event of a delay, must assume functions of subsidiary body Chairs in addition to their heavy presidency workload. And importantly, incoming Chairs whose appointments are delayed lose the opportunity for a thorough handover from the outgoing Chairs and their team members, many of whom leave New York after their terms end.  

A partial solution might be to update the contingency measure to provide that if a remaining elected member has served as the Chair of a subsidiary body the prior year, it would remain in that capacity on an ad interim basis until new bureaux are decided.[7] This would potentially reduce the number of bodies which the Council President would need to assist in the event of delayed appointments. And it would also allow at least some subsidiary bodies to continue their full functions with experienced Chairs in the interim. However, as can be seen in the five cases detailed above where the Council President acted on behalf of subsidiary bodies, in only one instance – that of the Counter-Terrorism Committee – would the 2024 Chair be remaining on the Council in 2025.

There thus seems to be no truly effective alternative to the earliest possible decision on chairing arrangements. Nonetheless, it is to be appreciated that the contingency measure has enabled the most essential official work of several subsidiary bodies to be handled in 2025, pending the finalization of appointments.

(This update supplements pages 556 to 559 of the book.)

___________________________________

[1] S/2024/507, para. 124

[2] As relates to the 2025 bureaux appointment process, Japan was the IWG Chair for 2024, the year of the election of the incoming 2025 members.

[3] The role of P5 coordinator rotates every three months. As relates to the 2025 bureaux appointment process, the P5 coordinators since the election of the incoming members have been France (May-July 2024), China (August-October 2024), United States (November 2024-January 2025), and the Russian Federation (February-April 2025).

[4] Nonetheless, there have been ample cases of single-year terms for Chairs.

[5] A footnote in the 2021 presidential note indicated that Mexico, an incoming member, would take on the position of Vice Chair for the Working Group on Children and Armed Conflict the following year.

[6] In 2023, the exact wording of the relevant paragraph was: “The 10 elected members expect that in making the final decision on the chairmanship of the Informal Working Group on Documentation and Other Procedural Questions in 2024, the Security Council will take note of the position of the current members of the Council as well as the views of the new members to be elected in June 2023. The current 10 elected members underline that they unanimously support Japan as Chair of the Informal Working Group in 2024.” The 2024 letter reproduced the same language.

[7] The Council might also consider eventually amending the contingency measure to state that it will apply for as long as a delay continues. As mentioned above, as presently worded, the measure applies explicitly only to the month of January.