Member States of The United Nations - Original Members

Original Members

The UN officially came into existence on 24 October 1945, after ratification of the United Nations Charter by the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (the Republic of China, France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States) and a majority of the other signatories. A total of 51 original members (or founding members) joined that year; 50 of them signed the Charter at the United Nations Conference on International Organization in San Francisco on 26 June 1945, while Poland, which was not represented at the conference, signed it on 15 October 1945.

Among the original members, 49 are either still UN members or had their memberships in the UN continued by a successor state (see table below); for example, the membership of the Soviet Union was continued by the Russian Federation after its dissolution (see the section Former members: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics). The other two original members, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia (i.e., the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia), had been dissolved and their memberships in the UN not continued by any one successor state (see the sections Former members: Czechoslovakia and Former members: Yugoslavia).

At the time of UN's founding, the seat of China in the UN was held by the Republic of China, but as a result of United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2758, it is now held by the People's Republic of China (see the section Former members: Republic of China).

A number of the original members were not sovereign when they joined the UN, and only gained full independence later:

• Belarus (then the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic) and Ukraine (then the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic) were both constituent republics of the Soviet Union, until gaining full independence in 1991.
• India (whose territory at that time, before the partition of India, also included the present-day territories of Pakistan and Bangladesh) was under British colonial rule, until gaining full independence in 1947.
• The Philippines (then the Philippine Commonwealth) was a commonwealth with the United States, until gaining full independence in 1946.
• New Zealand, while de facto sovereign at that time, "only gained full capacity to enter into relations with other states in 1947 when it passed the Statute of Westminster Adoption Act. This occurred 16 years after the British Parliament passed the Statute of Westminster Act in 1931 that recognised New Zealand's autonomy. If judged by the Montevideo Convention criteria, New Zealand did not achieve full de jure statehood until 1947."