Germany suffered a diplomatic defeat at the UN on Wednesday, losing a bid for a Security Council seat for the first time as the General Assembly elected five new non-permanent members.
Austria and Portugal took the two seats set aside for the Western European and Others group, defeating Germany.
Germany received 104 votes, well short of the two-thirds majority required.
“We applied with conviction. We did not achieve our goal,” Chancellor Friedrich Merz said in a statement. “This result does not alter the tasks we face at the United Nations. Germany remains a reliable pillar of the multilateral system.”
The newly elected members – Portugal, Austria, Trinidad and Tobago, Zimbabwe and Kyrgyzstan – will serve two-year terms on the 15-member council, the UN body charged with maintaining international peace and security.
Zimbabwe received 182 votes from the 191 member states that cast ballots, while Trinidad and Tobago won 181. In the Western European and Others group contest, Portugal won 134 votes and Austria 131, enough to claim the two available seats.
Kyrgyzstan took the Asia-Pacific seat with 141 votes, defeating the Philippines after four rounds of voting.
Zimbabwe and Trinidad and Tobago ran unopposed for seats allocated to the African group and the Latin American and Caribbean group, respectively.
Kyrgyzstan's victory over the Philippines marked the only contested race outside the Western European group.
It becomes only the second Central Asian country to serve on the council, after Kazakhstan's tenure from 2017 to 2018.
Under UN rules, candidates must win the support of two-thirds of member states present and voting in the 193-member General Assembly, even when running unopposed.
The five countries will replace Denmark, Greece, Pakistan, Panama and Somalia when their terms expire at the end of 2026.
The Security Council consists of five permanent veto-wielding members – the US, China, Russia, Britain and France – and 10 elected members in staggered, two-year terms. Seats are distributed among regional groups to ensure geographic representation.
The incoming members will join the council as wars in Ukraine and the Middle East continue to dominate its agenda. Their arrival comes amid growing divisions among the permanent members, whose rivalries have increasingly paralysed the council's ability to respond to major international conflicts.
