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VETO POWER AND DOUBLE VETO POWER
Security Council is the principal organ of the United Nations. Chapter V of the UN Charter consisting of Articles 23 to 27 lays down the provisions relating to Security Council. Out of the 15 members of Security Council, five are permanent members. Their names are mentioned under Article 23, Para 1 of the UN Charter. They are: China, France, USSR, the United Kingdom of Great Britain, and the United States of America. The other 10 members are called as non-permanent members.
VETO POWER: Article 27, Para 3 stipulates that the decisions on non-procedural matters shall be taken up by the vote of nine members of the Council including the votes of the five permanent members. It means that in the event of dissenting vote being casted by the Permanent members, no decision can be taken by the Council on such matters. In other words, it gives the power to 5 permanent members by casting dissenting votes to stop the Council from making any decision.
Thus, by giving a dissenting vote a Permanent member has power to block the issue in the Security Council. A veto may thus be defined as a ‘negative vote cast by a permanent member of the Security Council that has the effect of nullifying the affirmative votes of an adequate majority. However, the term ‘veto’ has not found a specific mention in the Charter.
The veto power is often being considered as the price paid to the ‘big five’ for the creation of the United Nations. The veto power was conferred in a good faith because the framers of the Charter knew that the co-operation of all the big powers is elementary for the maintenance if International peace and security. Though their hope was soon belied owing to the tension between the big five countries. Notably, the veto power is only limited to non-procedural matters and even abstinence of a permanent member from a decision is considered as Deemed Veto.The Veto power vested in the hands of the permanent members has been criticised on many grounds, that are for creating differences between member countries of Security Council, hindering with the working of Council in an unbiased manner and also it has ruled out the complete chances of taking an action against the permanent members. Although the elimination of the veto power has been advocated by different States from time to time no positive step has been taken to eliminate it.
DOUBLE VETO: The right of Double Veto has been exercised on three occasions yet, i.e., in the Spanish case, Czechoslovak case and in the Greek case. The permanent members have the power of the so-called double veto- once on the preliminary question of determining the type of the matter, and then on the merits of the matter. The right of veto may be exercised by the permanent members of the Security Council on these two different occasions.
Firstly, at the time of deciding the nature of matter i.e., whether the matter is procedural or non-procedural. If the President of the Council decides that the particular matter is procedural, it becomes non-procedural if the veto power is exercised on the decision of the President.
And secondly, when the council is taking decision on any non-procedural matter. Thus, a permanent member first asserts that the matter is not a procedural but a non-procedural matter. It therefore makes a matter non-procedural from procedural by exercising the veto power. When a matter becomes non-procedural, it may again exercise the veto power at the time of taking decision on that very matter. The combined effect of the above is that the Council cannot take a decision even on Procedural Matter if the same has been made non-procedural by the exercise of the right of Veto by any permanent member. The exercise of veto power on two different occasions has been referred as “Double-Veto”. In the Formosa Case and Laos case it was attempted but not actually exercised.
