United Nations

Every UN member state is part of the General Assembly. Each state has one vote but may send up to five delegates to represent them.

The General Assembly meets in annual sessions, typically running from September to September. It also sometimes meets in special and emergency sessions.

During each session, the General Assembly will variously meet as a plenary and as six committees of the whole:

• Plenary meetings are open to all member states and member states may discuss any topic.
• Committees of the whole are also open to all member states but are focused on specific topics. A country's different delegates usually attend different committees of the whole, based on their areas of expertise. The committees may further divide themselves into smaller, specialized working groups and subcommittees.

The six main committees are:

• First Committee (Disarmament & International Security) 
• Second Committee (Economic & Financial) 
• Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian & Cultural)  
• Fourth Committee (Special Political & Decolonization) 
• Fifth Committee (Administrative & Budgetary)
• Sixth Committee (Legal) 

In February of each year, the General Assembly begins drafting an agenda that is completed by the start of the new session in September. Each agenda item is allocated to the plenary or to a specific committee.

The Trusteeship Council was established to manage the transition of former colonies to self-government. In 1994, the last of its trustees achieved self-government and it no longer meets regularly.