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COMMISSION I COMMITTEE 2 GENERAL PROVISIONS: MEMBERSHIP, AMENDMENTS, AND SECRETARIAT NEW ZEALAND REPRESENTATIVES Delegate Rt. Hon. P. Eraser Alternate Mr. J. V. Wilson TERMS OF REFERENCE The following Chapters of the Dumbarton Oaks proposals were remitted to Committee 1/2: —- Chapter 111 Membership. Chapter IV Principal Organs. Chapter X Secretariat. Chapter XI Amendments. MEMBERSHIP Chapter 111 of the Dumbarton Oaks Proposals reads: — " Membership of the Organization should be open to all peaceloving States." At the outset of the discussion the selective principle which is at the basis of the Dumbarton Oaks proposals on membership was challenged by the delegate of Uruguay. He proposed that membership of the Organization should be universal and permanent, all States being members as of right, and none being permitted to withdraw, or to be expelled. The membership of States other than those represented at the Conference should be considered as suspended until the Assembly should hold that they were in a position to act within the Organization. The Committee did not uphold this viewpoint and concerned itself chiefly with the search for some more precise definition than is offered by the term " peace-loving." However, the term " peaceloving," like most of the original Dumbarton Oaks phraseology, was found to have strong survival value, and appears in the final text. This distinguishes between initial members which will be members as of right and those which must apply for admission. It reads: — " The original members of the United Nations shall be the States which, having participated in the United Nations Conference on International Organization at San Francisco, or having previously signed the Declaration by United Nations of 1 January, 1942, sign the present Charter and ratify it in accordance with Article 110." (Article 3 of Charter.) " Membership in the United Nations is open to all other peaceloving. states which accept the obligations contained in the present Charter and, in the judgment of the Organization, are able and willing to carry out these obligations." (Article 4, para. 1, of Charter.) Consideration of the means by which new members were to be admitted to the Organization—i.e., decision of the General Assembly upon recommendation of the Security Council—was outside the purview of Committee 1/2, which was concerned only with the grounds upon which membership could be- obtained. The examination by the full Commission of the Chapter on membership was enlivened by the presentation of the following Declaration by the delegation of Mexico: — "It is the understanding of the delegation of Mexico that paragraph 2 of Chapter lII* cannot be applied to the States whose regimes have been established with the help of military forces belonging to the countries which have waged war against the United Nations, as long as those regimes are in power." * Article 4, para. 1, of Charter.