Despite an ever-precarious security situation that had claimed the lives of civilians and United Nations peacekeepers alike, the peace process in Mali was making headway along a timetable leading to elections later in 2018, the Secretary‑General’s Special Representative in that country told the Security Council today.
The Security Council, voting today on three separate draft resolutions in response to recent allegations of a chemical weapons attack in the Syrian town of Douma, failed to rally the votes needed to launch an “independent mechanism of investigation” into the incident, as delegates voiced frustration over the continued paralysis and the expanding rifts between nations.
The Security Council today decided to extend for one year the mandate of the United Nations Mission for Justice Support in Haiti (MINUJUSTH), while also laying out a staggered decrease in its uniformed personnel and requesting periodic progress assessments on the Secretary-General’s proposed drawdown and exit strategy.
In an emergency meeting following claims of chemical weapons attacks against civilians in Douma, Syria, both Security Council members and officials briefing them voiced grave concern that the use of such weapons risked being normalized — and could contribute to rapidly escalating tensions between world Powers — for the first time since the end of the cold war.
The Security Council met this afternoon for the second time in less than a month to discuss a nerve-agent attack against Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the British city of Salisbury in March, with the representative of the Russian Federation — which had requested the meeting — saying the United Kingdom was engaged in “a theatre of the absurd” by seeking to pin responsibility on his country.
The Security Council today expressed deep concern over the political situation in Burundi, the slow progress of the inter‑Burundian dialogue and the lack of engagement by the Government in that process.
After more than four years of work, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) was still unable to verify that Syria’s initial declaration on its chemical weapons programme was accurate, delegates told the Security Council today, underlining that questions remained about the use of such weapons in that country.
With the United Nations Mission for Justice Support in Haiti (MINUJUSTH) fully operational, preparations have already begun for that follow-up peacekeeping operation to make way for a new United Nations presence by the end of 2019 that would focus on the Caribbean nation’s long-term sustainable development, the Organization’s top peacekeeping official told the Security Council today.
The Security Council members, in an emergency meeting tonight, condemned the killing of civilians in Gaza during a peaceful protest that had erupted in violence.
A “quantum leap in collective engagement” was needed to meet the serious challenges facing United Nations peacekeeping operations, particularly in its largest deployments, the Secretary-General told the Security Council today in an open debate on improving the Organization’s flagship enterprise.
