Addressing the Security Council today, the President of the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, said he took great pride in closing down an institution of that calibre and in having kept his word to the 15‑nation organ that the Court would close by the end of 2017.
With the obvious goal of undermining national identity and international law, terrorists — particularly in armed conflict situations — were not only destroying lives and property, but also historical sites and objects, the head of the United Nations Office of Counter‑Terrorism told the Security Council today.
Although the United Nations and its partners were continuing to deliver life‑saving aid despite constant challenges, some 13.1 million people in Syria were still in urgent need of humanitarian assistance, the Under‑Secretary‑General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator told the Security Council today.
With violent extremists having suffered defeats in Syria and Iraq, the international community must step up cooperation to address the complex problem of foreign terrorist fighters returning home or travelling to other regions, the senior‑most United Nations official on that issue told the Security Council today.
Despite assurances from the Government of South Sudan, violence and governmental restrictions continued to prevent peacekeepers and humanitarian workers from fulfilling their respective mandates to protect civilians and deliver aid to those badly in need of it, the Assistant Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations told the Security Council today.
Slavery and other grave human rights abuses affecting migrants and refugees travelling to North Africa and beyond constituted an abomination that could no longer be ignored, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees told the Security Council today.
Pointing to signs of emerging common ground towards implementing the United Nations process for ending the conflict in Syria, the Secretary‑General’s Special Envoy for that country today called on the Security Council to support meaningful progress in the eighth round of talks, due to begin in Geneva on 28 November.
Victory over Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL/Da’esh) had come at a very high cost, with thousands of fighters and civilians killed or wounded, hundreds of thousands of children brainwashed, entire cities in ruins, and some six million people displaced, the Secretary‑General’s Special Representative in Iraq said today, as he briefed the Security Council on the situation concerning that country.
The Security Council reiterated its condemnation of trafficking in human beings today, particularly the sale of people by Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as Da’esh), as well as other violations and abuses by Boko Haram, Al‑Shabaab, the Lord’s Resistance Army and other such groups for the purpose of sexual slavery, sexual exploitation and forced labour.
The Security Council this afternoon, meeting independently from but concurrently with the General Assembly, elected Dalveer Bhandari (India) to the International Court of Justice for a nine‑year term, beginning on 6 February 2018.
