Briefing the Security Council on a range of priorities today, Special Envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen detailed efforts to build trust among warring parties, facilitate the creation of a constitutional committee and clarify the fate of persons missing since the start of the conflict, now in its eighth year.
Civil society leaders briefing the Security Council today described a deepening crisis in the Occupied Palestinian Territory characterized by political mistrust, economic challenges and environmental degradation while calling upon authorities in the Middle East to harness new green technologies as a tool for peace.
Amid flaring tensions in eastern Ukraine, delegates in the Security Council today urged all parties to the conflict — now in its fifth year — to avoid unilateral actions that could exacerbate tensions, and to uphold their commitments, under the Minsk Protocol agreements to bring peace to the region’s 3.5 million beleaguered people in need of humanitarian assistance.
Among those suffering most from “a litany of horrors” in Syria are persons with disabilities, who are often excluded and face specific protection and psychosocial challenges, the Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs told the Security Council today, as she described deteriorating humanitarian conditions in the country.
The Security Council called today upon warring parties around the globe to implement concrete commitments to fight what many speakers described as the heinous, barbaric and all-too-often silent phenomenon of sexual violence during conflict.
The planned withdrawal of the African Union-United Nations Hybrid Operation in Darfur (UNAMID) by 30 June 2020 is on track, but the political situation in Sudan has changed drastically and could affect implementation of the mission’s mandate going forward, the Joint Special Representative of the African Union and the Secretary-General for the country’s western Darfur region told the Security Council today.
The Government of Yemen and the Houthi militia forces fighting it have accepted a detailed plan for phase one of the redeployment of their respective forces from the vital port city of Hodeidah, as stipulated in the December 2018 Stockholm Agreement, the Secretary-General’s Special Envoy told the Security Council today.
The greatest uncertainty in a climate of uncertainty would be to reopen the Final Peace Agreement that ended five decades of conflict between the Government of Colombia and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People’s Army (FARC-EP), the Secretary-General’s Special Representative in that country warned while briefing the Security Council today.
The Security Council decided today to extend the mandate of the United Nations Mission for Justice Support in Haiti (MINUJUSTH) for a final period of six months until 15 October and requested the Secretary-General to start planning for an appropriate integrated United Nations system presence in the Caribbean nation that would include a special political mission.
The Security Council decided today to renew until 15 October the support provided by the United Nations Interim Security Force for Abyei (UNISFA) to the Joint Border Verification and Monitoring Mechanism, recognizing that the current situation in the disputed region and along the Sudan-South Sudan border continues to constitute a threat to international peace and security.
