Eighteen months after the fall of its long-standing dictatorship, Syria’s strides towards stability and the fragility of that progress now sit “side by side”, the UN’s Deputy Special Envoy told the Security Council today, calling for continued support as the country navigates a critical period in its transition.
While a limited ceasefire has improved life in Gaza somewhat, millions of its residents still face tremendous daily difficulties, the Security Council heard today, as speakers underscored the need to provide immediate humanitarian help to a population that can ill afford to wait.
As Libya’s political process shows renewed but fragile momentum, the Security Council today pressed national stakeholders to move beyond consultations and deliver concrete progress on elections, institutional unification, security stabilization and economic reform.
As conflicts multiply and women remain largely absent from peace negotiations, senior United Nations officials, civil society and Member States today urged the Security Council to move beyond rhetoric and make women’s participation in peace processes funded and non-negotiable, warning that peace built without women is “only a pause in violence”.
Several delegates and Western Sahara petitioners today urged the Special Committee on Decolonization to liberate the “last colony in Africa” through a self-determination referendum that includes independence as an option, while other speakers supported Morocco’s autonomy proposal as the most realistic solution for resolving the longstanding question.
Urging parties in Yemen to build on fresh momentum generated by the United States-Iran peace deal and the release of 1,600 prisoners held over two years of Yemen’s protracted civil war, speakers in the Security Council today called on the Aden-based Government and Sana’a-based Houthis to work towards an inclusive political settlement.
Opening the main part of its 2026 session today, the Special Committee on Decolonization approved three draft resolutions on United Nations support for the world’s 17 remaining Non-Self-Governing Territories.
The Security Council today extended the mandate of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) until 17 June 2027, as speakers warned that the systematic exclusion of women and girls from public life continues to undermine Afghanistan’s prospects for peace, stability and recovery.
Amid its review of the entity tasked with concluding the functions of two landmark international criminal courts, speakers in the Security Council today alternately highlighted the need to safeguard the legacy at stake and finalize the work of a mechanism always envisioned as temporary.
Peace is never elegant, it is “a messy series of concessions that leave everyone truly exhausted, but alive” and that is infinitely preferable to the alternative, the Security Council heard today from the speaker of a country that has survived a civil war.
