On 20 September 1977, the UN General Assembly admitted Djibouti, then Viet Nam, as the 148th and 149th member states. Resolutions A/RES/32/1 and A/RES/32/2 were adopted on the same day. Membership rose to 149. The official spelling in the admission papers is Viet Nam, not “Vietnam”.

Djibouti declared independence from France on 27 June 1977. Admission in New York came in under three months. It is not a calendar coincidence with the Indochina war: they are two separate files, voted one after the other.

Reunified Viet Nam, as a Socialist Republic, sought a seat after 1976. The Indochina war had ended in 1975. Admission closed a decade in which a state recognised by part of the Assembly was contested by another.

The two resolutions are short: they welcome the applications and decide on admission. They do not contain colonial history. This account does not confuse them and does not invent country-by-country votes.

After 1977 the UN continued to grow. 149 is not today’s figure. The 49th anniversary is about one day, not the current membership map.

The official documents sit on undocs.org. The member-state lists on the UN website are inventories, not articles. The main source remains Viet Nam’s admission resolution, read together with Djibouti’s.

There is no forced analogy between the Horn of Africa and Indochina. Only the same date and the same hall.

Image: UN General Assembly hall, New York (2024), Mojnsen, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.

Source consulted: A/RES/32/2 — Admission of the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam to membership in the United Nations.