Group of Friends and Like-Minded Group Mechanics

Definitions and Typology

The United Nations operates through formal organs but is steered by informal coalitions. Three configurations recur. A Group of Friends is a small, self-selected coalition of states — typically 4 to 10 — that shepherds a country file, thematic issue, or peace process. A Core Group is a tighter drafting cell, usually 3 to 6 states, that holds the pen on a specific Security Council or General Assembly text. A Like-Minded Group (LMG) is a broader, often standing political bloc — sometimes 20 to 130 states — organized around a shared normative position (development financing, sovereignty doctrine, human rights pushback, disarmament).

None of these arrangements appears in the UN Charter or in the Provisional Rules of Procedure of the Security Council (S/96/Rev.7) or the Rules of Procedure of the General Assembly (A/520/Rev.19). They are extra-statutory, but they determine which drafts reach the chamber and in what form.

Historical Origins

The modern Group of Friends model crystallized with the Friends of the Secretary-General on Haiti (1993–94), comprising Argentina, Canada, France, the United States, and Venezuela, which underwrote the negotiations producing Security Council Resolution 940 (1994) authorizing the multinational force. The Friends of El Salvador (Colombia, Mexico, Spain, Venezuela) — convened in 1990 — had earlier accompanied the Chapultepec process and is the template most often cited by UN mediation doctrine, including the 2012 Guidance for Effective Mediation (A/66/811).

Other durable Friends groups include the Friends of the Western Sahara (the so-called 'Group of Friends' on MINURSO: France, Russia, Spain, the UK, the US), the Friends of Yemen (founded 2010), the Friends of the Great Lakes, and the Friends of Mediation co-chaired since 2010 by Turkey and Finland, which produced GA Resolutions 65/283, 66/291, and 68/303.

How Penholding Interacts with Friends Groups

Since the Note by the President S/2017/507 codified Council working methods, penholding has been transparent: one or two permanent members typically draft on each file (UK on Yemen, Somalia, Sudan; France on the Sahel, Lebanon, Haiti; US on DPRK, Afghanistan, Syria humanitarian). A Friends group surrounds the penholder, supplying political cover, capital outreach, and amendments. The penholder is not obliged to consult the Friends, but ignoring them produces visible fractures — as occurred during the 2014 negotiations on Resolution 2139 (Syria humanitarian access), where the broader humanitarian Friends pushed back against an initial P3 draft.

Like-Minded Groups as Negotiating Blocs

The largest standing LMGs operate primarily in the General Assembly and ECOSOC. The Group of 77 and China (134 members as of 2024), chaired in 2024 by Uganda, coordinates Southern positions on the Second Committee, financing for development, and the 2030 Agenda follow-up. The Non-Aligned Movement (120 members, chaired by Uganda 2024–27) drives First Committee disarmament texts and Fourth Committee decolonization items.

Narrower LMGs include the Like-Minded Group of Developing Countries (Algeria, Bolivia, China, Cuba, DPRK, Egypt, Iran, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Russia, Syria, Venezuela, Zimbabwe), which coordinates sovereignty-protective amendments in the Third Committee; the Group of Friends of R2P (co-chaired by the Netherlands and Rwanda); the ACT Group (Accountability, Coherence, Transparency, 27 states, chaired by Switzerland), which produced the December 2015 Code of Conduct on mass-atrocity vetoes (now 130+ signatories); and the Small Five (S-5) initiative on Council reform, dissolved in 2012 after the withdrawal of draft A/66/L.42/Rev.2.

Convening, Chairing, and Pen Mechanics

A Friends group is typically convened by a Secretariat envoy or by a member state acting as political entrepreneur. The convening state issues a Note Verbale inviting capitals to designate a focal point — usually a Counsellor or Minister-Counsellor at the Permanent Mission, occasionally the desk officer in the capital ministry. Meetings are held in the Permanent Mission of the chair or in a Secretariat conference room (S-prefix room in the basement of the Conference Building), under Chatham House terms. No summary records exist; the Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs (DPPA) regional division often staffs the group informally, supplying background notes but not minutes.

The pen within a Friends group is distinct from the Council penholder. A Friend may hold the pen on a particular paragraph — for example, Norway holding the pen on humanitarian language in the Yemen Friends during its 2021–22 Council term, while the UK held the formal Council pen. Friends groups frequently produce non-papers (unsigned, unattributed drafts) that migrate into Council blue texts after the penholder absorbs them.

Sequencing into Formal Outputs

A standard sequence: (1) Friends meeting at expert level produces a non-paper; (2) the penholder circulates a 'zero draft' to the P5; (3) silence procedure (typically 24 hours) tests P5 consensus; (4) the draft goes to the E10 in informal consultations under Rule 48 of the Provisional Rules; (5) 'blue' — the formal printing of the draft in UN blue ink — triggers the 24-hour minimum before vote under the working-methods note S/2017/507, paragraph 78. Friends groups operate primarily in stages 1 and 2.

In the General Assembly, the analogous sequence runs through main committee bureaux. An LMG agrees a common position; one member tables the draft resolution under the relevant agenda item; informal consultations are facilitated by the bureau; and the text proceeds to the committee and then to plenary. The G77 'Chair's text' on financing for development resolutions — for example, the Doha Declaration (A/RES/63/239, 2008) and the Addis Ababa Action Agenda (A/RES/69/313, 2015) — emerges from this process.

Frictions and Limits

Friends groups generate three recurring pathologies. First, capture: a host-state Friend can veto unwelcome ideas, as Russia did within the Friends of Georgia (1993–2008) before UNOMIG's mandate lapsed following Resolution 1866 (2009). Second, dilution: broad Friends groups produce lowest-common-denominator non-papers that the penholder must then re-toughen, as in the 2018 Yemen ceasefire negotiations preceding Resolution 2451. Third, proliferation: by 2023 the UN counted more than 40 active Friends and Core Groups in New York alone, fragmenting diplomatic bandwidth.

LMG discipline is enforced by bloc statements — the G77 Chair speaks first in Second Committee general debates under the practice codified in the rolling Programme of Work; NAM statements are delivered by the Chair under Rule 68. Defection is costly: when Argentina, Brazil, and South Africa diverged from G77 positions on the 2022 Loss and Damage facility at COP27, the deviation was litigated in subsequent ECOSOC sessions. Practitioners must therefore weigh bloc loyalty against national instructions, often by inserting explanation of vote (EOV) language under Rule 88 of the GA rules to dissociate from specific paragraphs while voting for the whole.