Recounting the haunting stories of Rohingya refugees they met during a recent mission to Bangladesh and Myanmar, Security Council members today described mass rapes, attacks on children and the razing of entire villages, stressing that the visit had “awakened their collective conscience” into robust and concerted action.
Rising political temperatures between Pristina and Belgrade were threatening to derail efforts to find lasting peace in Kosovo, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General told the Security Council today.
The Security Council today stressed that the “primacy of politics” should be the hallmark of the United Nations approach to conflict resolution, with political solutions guiding the design and deployment of the Organization’s peacekeeping operations.
The ongoing reconfiguration of the African Union-United Nations Hybrid Operation in Darfur (UNAMID) was having no adverse impact on security, although efforts towards a political solution to the conflict remained stalled, the Head of that Mission told the Security Council this morning as he presented the Secretary-General’s latest 60-day report on the situation there.
On the seventieth anniversary of United Nations peacekeeping, the commanders of three of the Organization’s missions in Africa briefed the Security Council this afternoon on the increasingly complex challenges faced by Blue Helmets, emphasizing that their core role was to establish secure environments that would enable political solutions to take root.
Despite significant progress in the International Criminal Court’s investigation of crimes committed within Libya in 2011 — including its first visit to the country in five years, in March 2018 — the cause of criminal justice would be undermined unless accused perpetrators were handed over, the Chief Prosecutor told the Security Council today.
With Bosnia and Herzegovina’s general elections scheduled for 7 October, and in light of a worrying uptick in divisive nationalist rhetoric, the international community must remain united and coordinate its efforts to ensure a united, stable and prosperous country, the top international official in the federation told the Security Council this morning.
The Security Council today strongly encouraged Member States as well as relevant regional, subregional and international organizations to enhance cooperation and strategies to prevent terrorists from benefiting from transnational organized crime.
The cessation of hostilities in South Sudan, agreed in 2017, showed no sign of implementation, the Under‑Secretary‑General for Peacekeeping Operations told the Security Council today, saying a ceasefire was “a distant prospect” amid disagreements over its modalities and wider transitional security arrangements.
The Security Council today extended the mandate of the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO) until 31 October 2018, calling for a “realistic, practicable and enduring” political solution to end the decades‑old conflict.
