The United Nations Regional Groups are the geopolitical regional groups of member states of the United Nations. Originally, the UN member states were unofficially organized into five groups as an informal means of sharing the distribution of posts for General Assembly committees. Now this grouping has taken on a much more expansive and official role. Many UN bodies are allocated on the basis of geographical representation. Top leadership positions, including Secretary-General and President of the General Assembly, are rotated among the regional groups. The groups also coordinate substantive policy and form common fronts for negotiations and bloc voting. History League of Nations The precedent of the geographic distribution of seats was set by the United Nations' predecessor, the League of Nations. Under the League's system, a Nominations Committee was created in order to create election slates for distribution of seats in the Council of the League. This proved a difficult task as the number of seats on the Council was constantly changing. However, from 1926 to 1933 an unofficial pattern of distribution emerged where the non-permanent seats on the Council were distributed along the following lines: 3 for Latin American states 1 for a Scandinavian state 1 for a Little Entente state (Czechoslovakia, Romania or Yugoslavia) 1 for a member of the British Commonwealth 1 for a Far Eastern state 1 seat each for Spain and Poland United Nations During the drafting of the United Nations Charter, the idea of geographic distribution of seats of the new organisation's bodies was one of the priorities of the drafters. On the United States' recommendation, the very first General Committee of the United Nations was composed of: The five permanent members of the Security Council 3 Latin American states 2 British Commonwealth states 2 Eastern European states 1 Western European state 1 Middle Eastern state This distribution began the precedent of using regional groups for the allocation of seats in United Nations bodies. For example, the first election to the Security Council used a similar scheme, allocating seats along the following lines: The five permanent members of the Security Council 2 Latin American states 1 British Commonwealth state 1 Eastern European state 1 Western European states 1 Middle Eastern state Elections to the Economic and Social Council also followed along similar lines, but instead allocated seats to "Near East states" and not "Middle Eastern states." However, these arrangements were not formal and were