Meetings Coverage

Meeting today amid the unfolding crisis in Ukraine, the Security Council rejected a draft resolution intended to end the Russian Federation’s military offensive against that neighbouring State.

The international diplomacy needed to spur humanitarian and early recovery efforts will be more precarious against the new backdrop of military operations in Ukraine, the top United Nations official on Syria warned the Security Council today, as he briefed members on recent developments.

The Security Council today renewed the mandate of its committee monitoring implementation of a resolution that aims to prevent non-State actors from acquiring nuclear, biological and chemical weapons and their means of delivery, as Council members debated the technical nature of that renewal after its unanimous adoption.

A stagnant government formation process following Iraq’s largely peaceful elections last October is stalling urgently needed reforms and creating a dangerous political and security vacuum that could be exploited by Da’esh, the top United Nations official in the country told the Security Council today.

The spokesperson of the al-Shabaab armed group has been listed by the Security Council’s Sanctions Committee on Somalia, and the related Panel of Experts has elaborated the areas on which it will focus under its mandate, renewed on 15 November 2021, the Chair of that body told members today.

The Russian Federation must call off its “special military operation” and perceived declaration of war against Ukraine, members of the Security Council demanded tonight in a heated emergency meeting, condemning contraventions of international law and the United Nations Charter, and raising alarm about the dangers of an explosive regional conflict fomenting a global humanitarian crisis not seen since the Second World War.

The General Assembly discussed recent developments in eastern Ukraine today, with the top United Nations official declaring that the Russian Federation has punctured the inviolability of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity by its formal acknowledgement of the independence of the latter’s territories of Donetsk and Luhansk.

In a Security Council meeting on the Middle East peace process today, delegates urged Israel to scrap its plan to evict Palestinian families from the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood of occupied East Jerusalem, arguing that it would undercut prospects for a two-State solution.

The Security Council unanimously adopted today a resolution confirming that the United Nations Compensation Commission has fulfilled its mandate in processing claims and paying compensation for losses and damage suffered by Kuwait as a direct result of Iraq’s unlawful invasion and occupation of its territory in 1990.

While slow progress is being made to advance the peace process in the Central African Republic, the new Government, appointed earlier this year, faces a host of formidable challenges, including the resumption of republican dialogue, restoration of State authority and holding of elections for the first time in three decades, the Head of the United Nations peacekeeping mission there told the Security Council today as members sparred over the continued imposition of the arms embargo first put in place in 2013.