| UN Security Council Resolution 462 | |
|---|---|
 Soviet paratroopers in Kabul | |
| Date | 9 January 1980 |
| Meeting no. | 2,190 |
| Code | S/RES/462 (Document) |
| Subject | International peace and security |
Voting summary | 12 voted for 2 voted against 1 abstained |
| Result | Adopted |
| Security Council composition | |
Permanent members | |
Non-permanent members | |
United Nations Security Council resolution 462, adopted on 9 January 1980, after considering an item on the agenda of the Council and given the lack of unanimity amongst its permanent members, the Council decided to call an emergency meeting of the United Nations General Assembly to discuss the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
The permanent members of the United Nations Security Council are the five states which the UN Charter of 1945 grants a permanent seat on the UN Security Council: China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. These countries were all allies in World War II, which they won. They are also all nuclear weapons states. A total of 15 UN member states serve on the UNSC, the remainder of which are elected. Any one of the five permanent members have the power of veto, which enables them to prevent the adoption of any "substantive" draft Council resolution, regardless of its level of international support.
The United Nations General Assembly is one of the six principal organs of the United Nations (UN), the only one in which all member nations have equal representation, and the main deliberative, policy-making, and representative organ of the UN. Its powers are to oversee the budget of the UN, appoint the non-permanent members to the Security Council, appoint the Secretary-General of the United Nations, receive reports from other parts of the UN, and make recommendations in the form of General Assembly Resolutions. It has also established numerous subsidiary organs.
The Soviet–Afghan War lasted over nine years, from December 1979 to February 1989. Insurgent groups known collectively as the mujahideen, as well as smaller Maoist groups, fought a guerrilla war against the Soviet Army and the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan government, mostly in the rural countryside. The mujahideen groups were backed primarily by the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan, making it a Cold War proxy war. Between 562,000 and 2,000,000 civilians were killed and millions of Afghans fled the country as refugees, mostly to Pakistan and Iran.
Contents
Two days prior to the adoption of Resolution 462, a previous draft resolution had been vetoed by the Soviet Union. [1] During the discussions of the draft resolution, some members of the Council highlighted the serious nature of the situation and that it justified a General Assembly debate. [2]
The United Nations Security Council "veto power" refers to the power of the permanent members of the UN Security Council to veto any "substantive" resolution. A permanent member's abstention or absence does not prevent a draft resolution from being adopted. This veto power does not apply to "procedural" votes, as determined by the permanent members themselves. A permanent member can also block the selection of a Secretary-General, although a formal veto is unnecessary since the vote is taken behind closed doors.
The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), was a socialist state in Eurasia that existed from 30 December 1922 to 26 December 1991. Nominally a union of multiple national Soviet republics, its government and economy were highly centralized. The country was a one-party state, governed by the Communist Party with Moscow as its capital in its largest republic, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. Other major urban centres were Leningrad, Kiev, Minsk, Alma-Ata, and Novosibirsk. It spanned over 10,000 kilometres east to west across 11 time zones, and over 7,200 kilometres north to south. It had five climate zones: tundra, taiga, steppes, desert and mountains.
The resolution was adopted by 12 votes to two against (East Germany, Soviet Union) with one abstention from Zambia.
East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic, was a country that existed from 1949 to 1990, when the eastern portion of Germany was part of the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War. It described itself as a socialist "workers' and peasants' state", and the territory was administered and occupied by Soviet forces at the end of World War II — the Soviet Occupation Zone of the Potsdam Agreement, bounded on the east by the Oder–Neisse line. The Soviet zone surrounded West Berlin but did not include it; as a result, West Berlin remained outside the jurisdiction of the GDR.
Abstention is a term in election procedure for when a participant in a vote either does not go to vote or, in parliamentary procedure, is present during the vote, but does not cast a ballot. Abstention must be contrasted with "blank vote", in which a voter casts a ballot willfully made invalid by marking it wrongly or by not marking anything at all. A "blank voter" has voted, although their vote may be considered a spoilt vote, depending on each legislation, while an abstaining voter hasn't voted. Both forms may or may not, depending on the circumstances, be considered to be a protest vote.
Zambia, officially the Republic of Zambia, is a landlocked country in south-central Africa. It neighbours the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the north, Tanzania to the north-east, Malawi to the east, Mozambique to the southeast, Zimbabwe and Botswana to the south, Namibia to the southwest, and Angola to the west. The capital city is Lusaka, located in the south-central part of Zambia. The population is concentrated mainly around Lusaka in the south and the Copperbelt Province to the northwest, the core economic hubs of the country.
Following the resolution, the Sixth emergency special session of the United Nations General Assembly took place.
The sixth emergency special session of the United Nations General Assembly was held between 10 January – 14 January 1980 to consider the situation in Afghanistan. As the Soviet–Afghan War began members of the United Nations General Assembly requested the Security Council consider the situation. The USSR veto of a resolution led the other members to invoke the 'Uniting for Peace' resolution to defer the issue to the General Assembly in an emergency special session. It was the sixth emergency special session since the 'Uniting for Peace' resolution was adopted in 1950. The session was dominated by questions of its legitimacy since the Afghanistan government had invited the Soviet intervention in their civil war. Led by the non-aligned members, the session ended with a resolution from the General Assembly calling for the immediate, unconditional and total withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan and the cessation of all outside intervention, subversion, coercion or constraint, of any kind whatsoever, so that its people could freely choose its own economic, political and social systems.
