Can there be a United Nations (UN) resolution to remove a country from the United Nations Security Council (UNSC)?
I am wondering if we can vote a country like France or China out of the UNSC. Is there any rule that forbid such a resolution to be drafted, or is anything possible?
The first and most obvious method is based on the UN charter, Article VI, which says in its entirety:
A Member of the United Nations which has persistently violated the Principles contained in the present Charter may be expelled from the Organization by the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council.
Obviously, if expelled from the UN, a country could no longer be a member of the Security Council.
Now, normally members of the Security Council have effective veto power, but Article 27 lists exceptions:
Decisions of the Security Council on all other matters shall be made by an affirmative vote of nine members including the concurring votes of the permanent members; provided that, in decisions under Chapter VI, and under paragraph 3 of Article 52, a party to a dispute shall abstain from voting.
The definition of disputes under Chapter VI is quite broad, so it seems likely that a country could bring a dispute to the UN focusing on a country's membership, and that country would have to abstain from voting on the issue. It could also be argued that the "recommendation of the Security Council," unlike "the affirmative vote of nine members," makes no mention of unanimity, and thus that a simple majority would suffice. Obviously this is subject to international jurisprudence, but since I doubt a case specifically dealing with this has come up, it's a viable interpretation.
Further, since this site deals with politics, not law, we must consider that in reality a country practically can be removed from the UN security council regardless of the legitimacy of the legal justifications, assuming the countries that oppose its membership and especially, the other members of the Security Council, want to remove it and are sufficiently economically or militarily powerful. If the legal methods were invalid or insufficient, they would come up with some justification to declare the nation's membership invalid in the first place.
The obvious historical precedent is Taiwan, the Republic of China, which the questioner may already be aware of. It used to be a permanent member of the UN Security Council as the successor state to the unified China that existed before 1949, until China, the People's Republic of China, became wealthy enough, and its control over the mainland obvious enough, that it made more sense for them to be a member of the Security Council. Then the PRC was recognized as the legitimate government of China, and they received Taiwan's seat on the Security Council, which they retain to this day. This was the General Assembly Resolution 2758. Not only did Taiwan lose its seat on the Security Council, but its UN membership generally. While this transition was undoubtedly made easier by Taiwan's claims to be the government of all of China, which clearly were not practically true, I think an equivalent form of reasoning could be used for any other country.
For instance, the General Assembly might decide that their membership is a priori invalid due to not being a "peace-loving state," a justification that could theoretically be applied to any country, or due to not actually being a legitimate nation at all.
The UN Charter does not provide for any way for a country to be removed from the UNSC. This is the case for both the permanent members (of which France and China are two, as well as the US, UK and Russia) and the non-permanent members (who serve two-year terms).
The only way that a non-permanent member can be removed mid-term, or a permanent member can be removed at all, is if an amendment is made to the UN Charter under Chapter XVIII. This would require a 2/3 vote of the General Assembly, and all permanent members of the Security Council would have to agree with it as well.
Effectively, what this means is that a permanent member of the UNSC cannot be removed from the UNSC without its consent.
Not without removing the member from the UN itself, which would still require a Security Council vote.
Disagreeing with another answer, the voting procedure quoted there does require "the concurring votes of the permanent members", so the 10 non-permanent members by themselves could not pass the resolution if any permanent member vetoed it. Given there are two electoral pacts generally (NATO and China+Russia), there will always be a veto.
The "China exception" where the PRC was recognized in place of the RoC was a change in which government was recognized, not the removal of a member. So it's of little precedental value where the goal is to remove a state altogether.
