Talk:List of current foreign ministers

New title?
A useful page, but many of these individuals do not actually have the title "foreign minister." Condi Rice, for instance, is "Secretary of State." Is there a more generic term that means "Cabinet-level official in charge of foreign relations"? --Jfruh 18:00, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Where's Taiwan
Inane Imp 00:36, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Amendment
I thought it might be useful to indicate the instances where the foreign affairs portfolio is kept by the head of government (the president in Kiribati and Palau and the prime minister in Antigua and Barbuda, Fiji, Qatar, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Samoa and Tuvalu). —Preceding unsigned comment added by Zoltan Bukovszky (talk • contribs) 15:06, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Organization of the list
For reasons of transparency and simplicity I think it would be useful to include only the UN members and the Holy See in the first table and the ministers of every other entity in the two boxes below. This is because only UN members and the Vatican can be regarded as independent, sovereign countries with broad international recognition where sovereignity over their national territory is not claimed by another country (or only minor territorial disputes exist). —Preceding unsigned comment added by Zoltan Bukovszky (talk • contribs) 15:30, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Female ministers
Is there a reason why female foreign ministers are in bold? This isn't an article about female officeholders, it's an article of all officeholders, therefore pointing out someone's gender is of relatively small importance. Furthermore, it's questionable to mark one gender in bold and the other in regular letters. H2ppyme (talk) 12:15, 5 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I agree that this misogynistic listing should be edited. And before you accuse me of being transphobic for the use of the term "misogynistic", then the point I'm trying to make is that a female shouldn't have to be 'bold' to be a foreign minister. 78.148.67.136 (talk) 19:26, 22 April 2016 (UTC)
 * I went ahead and unbolded all of the female foreign ministers who were highlighted. It's an unnecessary distinction to make for this list. GabeIglesia (talk) 02:06, 23 April 2016 (UTC)

RFC:The first sentence of the lead

 * The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Should the first sentence of the lead be amended to read:

"This is a list of current foreign ministers of the 193 United Nations member states as well as UN observer states Holy See (Vatican City) and State of Palestine" following this edit? Selfstudier (talk) 13:02, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

No, Why? The legal status of a state, is a meaningful and useful indicator of the extent to which it is able to conduct a foreign policy. But the lead text should probably be modified to better define the topic (and the distinct categories of listing) and should better define a "foreign minister", since although most states have such a role, it goes under many names.

Also, some of the later examples should at least be qualified, eg Fiona Hyslop of Scotland. Not only is she no longer 'in post', but when she did hold the post it was Cabinet Secretary for Culture, Tourism and External Affairs, usually abbreviated to "Culture Secretary", ie 'External Affairs' is tacked onto 'Tourism' which itself is tacked onto 'Culture' simply because Scotland (no disrespect, but ...), even among the uncertainties of Brexit and its very different position on that subject, has no separate foreign policy or powers. The equivalent is now Cabinet Secretary for the Constitution, Europe and External Affairs. There may be other instances in which entities are listed that have little or no separate foreign policies or powers. Should such partially autonomous states be listed at all and if so should there at least be some text to indicate the limits of their powers? Pincrete (talk) 13:20, 23 April 2020 (UTC)


 * Looking at the edit that was made, the answer to your "Why?" would appear to be the implicit question as to why one observer state of the UN should be included but not the other (there are only two). On other lists, sometimes two are included and other times only one and which one it is would appear to be a function of the political opinions of the majority editors on a given page rather than any consistent or logical approach to the question. I am thinking it might be best to take the question up centrally since this is not the only article where the question has arisen.Selfstudier (talk) 12:46, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the reply to the 'Why'. That would sound to me like an argument for excluding both from the main group, or marking their distinct status in some way. The whole purpose I imagine of distinct tables within this list, is to distinguish degrees of autonomy and 'powers'- including the power of a UN vote. Pincrete (talk) 13:28, 26 April 2020 (UTC)


 * Yes, that's another possibility although I have not seen any list that does it that way. On your point about the distinct tables, we have a table headed "Generally recognized sovereign states" which looks like OR (it is defined as the UN member states plus the Vatican and does not appear actually to have anything to do with the level of recognition, it seems merely an artifice for including the Vatican, which if excluded would allow a more obvious naming of "UN member states".Selfstudier (talk) 13:43, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Probably - an artifice that is. Pincrete (talk) 14:01, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

No. The fact that Vatican City and the State of Palestine are both "observer states" of the UN, when the former is a state whose sovereignty is not disputed by anyone and who would be a UN member but for its preference to remain as an observer (as Switzerland did from 1946 to 2002) and the latter is a disputed state whose sovereignty is not recognized by 12 of the 15 countries with the highest GDP (among the top 15 economies, only the People's Republic of China, India and Russia recognize Palestine; the U.S., Japan, Germany, the UK, France, Italy, Brazil, Canada, South Korea, Spain, Australia and Mexico do not recognize Palestine) and whose application for UN membership was (for all practical purposes) rejected just a few years ago, is all the proof one needs that being an observer state of the UN is not tantamount to recognition of sovereignty by the members of the UN; heck, three of the permanent members of the UN Security Council, which have a veto right over any issue of importance, have refused to recognize Palestine, and one permanent member of the Security Council (China) has refused to recognize Vatican City.

Besides, observer-state status does not give such states any voting rights that UN members enjoy; being a UN observer state does grant the state the right to join UN specialized agencies, but, then again, Kosovo and the two New Zealand associated states also have been granted membership to certain UN specialized agencies. So the fact that Palestine, but not Kosovo (for example), is a UN observer state is not much on which one can hang one's hat. I know that it's preferable to find a bright-line rule, but if such rule is contingent upon treating UN observer states as if they were UN member states it becomes arbitrary.

For these reasons, I think that it is perfectly reasonable to treat the 193 UN member states and Vatican City differently than the State of Palestine or the Republic of Kosovo. AuH2ORepublican (talk) 18:09, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

Yes or Alternatively as indicated by editor Pincrete, the Vatican should be excluded from the main table, which should be renamed "UN system" or "UN member states" respectively in order to eliminate the OR category that is there now. Note that several of the other sections make use of the UN designation although in general the section titles are an invention of Wikipedia editors and are therefore OR. I can think of any number of ways of dividing up the states that are not OR, one could divide them by population size or by GNP or by geographical location/continent and so on. For that matter, what would be wrong with a simple clean alphabetical list of states as it is at List of countries by population (United Nations) with no divisions at all? Pending the outcome of this RFC I have tagged the article for the aforementioned OR.Selfstudier (talk) 13:17, 27 April 2020 (UTC)


 * The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Foreign minister of Oman
Have anyone serious evidence Haitham bin Tariqis isalso foreign minister, as his predecessor Qaboos bin Said? Thank you! Bogdan Uleia (talk) 10:41, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

Afghanistan
Should Afghanistan be moved to "Other states" or "Other governments"? Since the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan is not a "Generally recognised sovereign states". Mike Rohsopht (talk) 15:56, 22 July 2022 (UTC)

Updates
Does anyone still take care of this list? There is an untypically long gap with no new foreign ministers. 2A01:598:B1AC:EE0A:1:0:B490:4AA3 (talk) 13:16, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

Foreign minister of 2024
foreign minister in current time 2409:4089:BE81:4FD1:0:0:2548:FB0C (talk) 04:38, 5 June 2024 (UTC)