Consultations of the Whole

Consultations of the Whole are the principal informal working format of the United Nations Security Council, convening all fifteen members behind closed doors to deliberate without the procedural constraints, public record, or interpretation requirements of a formal meeting. The format has no foundation in the UN Charter itself, which contemplates only formal meetings of the Council under Articles 28–32, nor in the Provisional Rules of Procedure adopted in 1946 and last revised in 1982. Instead, the practice emerged organically during the 1970s as Council members sought a venue to negotiate frankly outside the glare of plenary sessions, and was institutionalized in 1978 when the Council inaugurated a dedicated consultations room adjacent to the Security Council Chamber at UN Headquarters. The format is now codified by practice in the Council's Note by the President (most comprehensively S/2017/507), which sets out working methods including the conduct of consultations.

Procedurally, Consultations of the Whole are convened by the Council President — the office rotating monthly in English alphabetical order among the fifteen members — typically following requests from one or more delegations or after a briefing to the Council. The meeting takes place in the consultations room, which seats only the fifteen permanent representatives or their designated alternates, the Secretary-General or his representative, and a minimal Secretariat support team from the Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs. No verbatim record (the PV series) is produced; no journalists, NGO observers, or non-member states are admitted; and interpretation is provided in the six official languages but transcripts are not distributed. The President opens the session, recognizes speakers in the order they raise their flags, and manages negotiation of draft texts — resolutions, presidential statements, or press elements — paragraph by paragraph or through "silence procedure" whereby a text is deemed adopted unless an objection is raised by a stated deadline.

Variants of the format exist along a spectrum of formality. Informal interactive dialogues include non-Council states or non-state actors and are even less structured. "Informal consultations" without the "of the Whole" designation may involve subgroupings, and the Arria-formula meeting, pioneered by Venezuelan ambassador Diego Arria in 1992, permits Council members to hear from civil society and other outside voices in a setting outside the consultations room altogether. By contrast, Consultations of the Whole always include all fifteen members and address matters formally before the Council. Penholders — the member states, almost invariably the P3 (United States, United Kingdom, France) on most files — typically circulate draft texts in advance through the "blue" and "white" copy procedure, with consultations serving as the venue where amendments from the elected ten (E10) and the remaining P5 members (Russia, China) are negotiated.

Recent practice illustrates the format's centrality. During the February 2022 escalation of the Russia–Ukraine war, the Council held repeated Consultations of the Whole alongside public meetings, with Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield of the United States and Ambassador Vasily Nebenzia of the Russian Federation negotiating draft language privately before the public vetoes that followed. On the Syria humanitarian cross-border file, Consultations of the Whole at the Permanent Mission level have repeatedly produced compromise language extending the Bab al-Hawa mandate, most consequentially in July 2022 and July 2023 when Russia's posture forced renegotiation. The Albanian presidency of June 2022 and the Brazilian presidency of July 2023 both used consultations intensively to manage the DPRK and Haiti files respectively.

Consultations of the Whole must be distinguished from several adjacent formats. Formal Council meetings under Rule 48 of the Provisional Rules generate verbatim records, permit non-Council states to participate under Rules 37 and 38, and are the only venue in which resolutions can be adopted and votes cast. "Briefings" and "open debates" are sub-types of formal meetings. Private meetings under Rule 55 are formal but closed, with only a communiqué issued; troop-contributing country (TCC) meetings under Resolution 1353 (2001) follow this format. Consultations of the Whole, by contrast, produce no official output of any kind — they are purely a negotiating venue, and any decisions taken there must be confirmed in a subsequent formal meeting to acquire legal effect.

The format has attracted sustained criticism. The Accountability, Coherence and Transparency (ACT) group, launched in 2013 by Switzerland and now comprising some 27 small and mid-sized states, has pressed for fewer consultations and more open meetings on the grounds that closed sessions privilege the P5 and exclude affected states. Leaks from consultations — including to outlets such as What's In Blue, published by Security Council Report — have become routine, blurring the confidentiality premise. The 2017 Note 507 reforms encouraged greater use of open formats, yet the operational reality is that the most consequential negotiations on Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, and the Sahel still occur in the consultations room.

For the working practitioner — whether a mission political officer drafting instructions, a desk officer in a foreign ministry, or an analyst tracking Council dynamics — Consultations of the Whole are where Council outcomes are actually determined. Public meetings ratify positions already negotiated privately; understanding who spoke, what red lines were drawn, and which amendments were tabled in consultations is therefore indispensable. Sourcing this information requires cultivated contacts within E10 missions, careful reading of post-consultation stakeouts, and attention to specialized trackers, since the official UN record will reveal nothing of the substance.