UN Security Council Voting Data with Draft Resolutions
Overview
This dataset combines UN Security Council voting records with the full text of draft resolutions extracted from PDF documents. Each record represents a unique Security Council vote, including detailed member state votes, voting summaries, and the machine-readable text of the draft resolution document.
File: sc_voting_with_drafts.jsonl
Format: JSON Lines (one JSON object per line)
Size: 11 MB
Records: 2,787 unique Security Council votes
Time Period: 1946-2025 (79 years)
Data Sources
Voting Data:
2025_7_21_sc_voting.csv- 40,929 rows (15 member states × 2,787 votes)
- Source: UN Digital Library voting records
Draft PDFs:
pdf_draft/directory- 488 draft resolution PDFs
- All PDFs contain machine-readable text (99.6% extraction success rate)
- 5.68 million characters extracted
- Average: 11,640 characters per draft
Dataset Statistics
Coverage
- Total votes: 2,787
- With draft PDFs: 488 (17.5%)
- Without draft PDFs: 2,299 (82.5%)
- PDF extraction errors: 0
Temporal Distribution
| Decade | Vote Records | Draft PDFs |
|---|---|---|
| 1940s | 78 | 0 |
| 1950s | 54 | 0 |
| 1960s | 143 | 1 |
| 1970s | 186 | 5 |
| 1980s | 185 | 1 |
| 1990s | 638 | 73 |
| 2000s | 623 | 157 |
| 2010s | 596 | 180 |
| 2020s | 284 | 71 |
Top Years by Draft Availability
- 2002: 26 drafts
- 1998: 25 drafts
- 1999: 24 drafts
- 2016: 22 drafts
- 2006: 21 drafts
Data Structure
Each line is a JSON object with the following structure:
{
"undl_id": "705442",
"date": "2011-06-13",
"resolution": "S/RES/1986(2011)",
"draft": "S/2011/355",
"meeting": "S/PV.6554",
"description": "Security Council resolution 1986 (2011)...",
"agenda": "The situation in Cyprus.",
"subjects": "CYPRUS QUESTION",
"vote_note": "",
"modality": "Vote",
"undl_link": "https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/705442",
"vote_summary": {
"total_yes": 15,
"total_no": 0,
"total_abstentions": 0,
"total_non_voting": 0,
"total_ms": 15
},
"member_state_votes": [
{
"ms_code": "CHN",
"ms_name": "CHINA",
"permanent_member": true,
"vote": "Y"
},
...
],
"draft_pdf": {
"has_pdf": true,
"filename": "draft_S_2011_355.pdf",
"text": "United Nations S/2011/355...",
"char_count": 9740,
"page_count": 4
}
}
Field Descriptions
Core Metadata
- undl_id (string): Unique identifier from UN Digital Library
- date (string): Vote date in YYYY-MM-DD format
- resolution (string): Resolution number (e.g., "S/RES/1986(2011)")
- draft (string): Draft document number (e.g., "S/2011/355")
- meeting (string): Meeting record (e.g., "S/PV.6554")
- description (string): Full description of the resolution
- agenda (string): Agenda item description
- subjects (string): Subject classification
- vote_note (string): Additional voting notes
- modality (string): Voting type (typically "Vote")
- undl_link (string): URL to UN Digital Library record
Vote Summary
- total_yes (integer): Number of Yes votes
- total_no (integer): Number of No votes
- total_abstentions (integer): Number of abstentions
- total_non_voting (integer): Number of non-voting members
- total_ms (integer): Total member states (typically 15)
Member State Votes
Array of objects, one per Security Council member:
- ms_code (string): ISO country code (e.g., "USA", "CHN")
- ms_name (string): Country name (e.g., "UNITED STATES")
- permanent_member (boolean): Is this a permanent member (P5)?
- vote (string): Vote cast - "Y" (Yes), "N" (No), "A" (Abstain)
Draft PDF Data
- has_pdf (boolean): Whether draft PDF exists and was extracted
- filename (string|null): PDF filename (e.g., "draft_S_2011_355.pdf")
- text (string|null): Full extracted text from the PDF
- char_count (integer): Number of characters in extracted text
- page_count (integer): Number of pages in the PDF
- extraction_error (string|null): Error message if extraction failed
Usage Examples
Python
import json
# Load all records
records = []
with open('sc_voting_with_drafts.jsonl', 'r', encoding='utf-8') as f:
for line in f:
records.append(json.loads(line))
print(f"Loaded {len(records)} records")
# Find records with draft text
with_drafts = [r for r in records if r['draft_pdf']['has_pdf']]
print(f"Records with drafts: {len(with_drafts)}")
# Analyze voting patterns
unanimous = [r for r in records
if r['vote_summary']['total_yes'] == r['vote_summary']['total_ms']]
print(f"Unanimous votes: {len(unanimous)}")
# Search draft text
keyword = "peacekeeping"
matching = [r for r in with_drafts
if r['draft_pdf']['text'] and keyword.lower() in r['draft_pdf']['text'].lower()]
print(f"Drafts mentioning '{keyword}': {len(matching)}")
Command Line (jq)
# Count records by year
cat sc_voting_with_drafts.jsonl | jq -r '.date[:4]' | sort | uniq -c
# Find all vetoed resolutions
cat sc_voting_with_drafts.jsonl | jq 'select(.vote_summary.total_no > 0)'
# Extract all China votes
cat sc_voting_with_drafts.jsonl | jq '.member_state_votes[] | select(.ms_code == "CHN")'
# Get records with draft text over 50KB
cat sc_voting_with_drafts.jsonl | jq 'select(.draft_pdf.char_count > 50000)'
Analysis Ideas
Voting Pattern Analysis
- P5 veto frequency and patterns
- Voting bloc identification
- Temporal trends in voting behavior
Text Analysis
- Topic modeling on draft texts
- Resolution complexity (by text length)
- Language patterns in successful vs. failed resolutions
Correlation Studies
- Resolution length vs. voting outcome
- Subject matter vs. unanimity
- Temporal trends in resolution topics
Data Quality Notes
PDF Text Extraction
- Success Rate: 100% (488/488 PDFs successfully extracted)
- Non-Readable PDFs: 2 identified in initial scan (not in this dataset)
- Extraction Method: PyPDF2 library
- Text Quality: Machine-readable, preserves line breaks and structure
Missing Data
- Draft PDFs: 82.5% of votes lack draft PDFs
- Primarily older records (pre-1990s)
- Some recent records also missing
- Empty Fields: Some records have empty
agenda,subjects, orvote_notefields
Known Limitations
- Older resolutions (1940s-1980s) have limited draft PDF availability
- Some extracted text may contain formatting artifacts
- Member state names use historical designations (e.g., "USSR", "ZAIRE")
- Permanent member status reflects historical composition
File Generation
Script: create_voting_jsonl.py
Generated: 2025-10-31
Processing Time: ~5 minutes for 2,787 records
Generation Process
- Parse CSV voting data (40,929 rows)
- Group by
undl_id(2,787 unique votes) - For each vote:
- Aggregate member state votes
- Calculate vote summary
- Extract draft PDF text if available
- Write to JSONL format
License & Attribution
Data Source: United Nations Digital Library Website: https://digitallibrary.un.org/
Please cite the UN Digital Library when using this dataset. This compilation is provided for research and educational purposes.
Contact & Issues
For questions or issues with this dataset, please refer to the UN Digital Library documentation or the data processing scripts included in this repository.
Last Updated: October 31, 2025 Version: 1.0