United Nations Regional Groups
The member states of the United Nations are unofficially divided into five geopolitical regional groups. What began as an informal means of sharing the distribution of posts for General Assembly committees has taken on a much more expansive role. Depending on the UN context, regional groups control elections to UN-related positions, dividing up the pie on the basis of geographic representation, as well as coordinate substantive policy, and form common fronts for negotiations and voting.
As of July 2011, the 193 UN member states are divided into five groups:
- the African Group, with 54 member states.
- the Asia-Pacific Group, with 53 member states;
- the Eastern European Group, with 23 member states;
- the Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC), with 33 member states;
- the Western European and Others Group (WEOG), with 28 member states, plus 1 member state as observer.
Kiribati is not included in the above numbers (see below).
Read more about United Nations Regional Groups: Overview Table, Gallery, Criticisms
Famous quotes containing the words united, nations and/or groups:
“... while one-half of the people of the United States are robbed of their inherent right of personal representation in this freest country on the face of the globe, it is idle for us to expect that the men who thus rob women will not rob each other as individuals, corporations and Government.”
—Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906)
“When you have come into the land that the LORD your God is giving you, and have taken possession of it and settled in it, and you say, “I will set a king over me, like all the nations that are around me,” you may indeed set over you a king whom the LORD your God will choose. One of your own community you may set as king over you; you are not permitted to put a foreigner over you, who is not of your own community.”
—Bible: Hebrew, Deuteronomy 17:14,15.
“Women over fifty already form one of the largest groups in the population structure of the western world. As long as they like themselves, they will not be an oppressed minority. In order to like themselves they must reject trivialization by others of who and what they are. A grown woman should not have to masquerade as a girl in order to remain in the land of the living.”
—Germaine Greer (b. 1939)