Security Council: Meetings Coverage

The Security Council today extended for one year its sanctions on those threatening stability in Yemen, as well as the mandate of the Panel of Experts assisting the committee charged with overseeing those measures.

Member States and the United Nations must stop viewing peacebuilding solely as a post-conflict activity and focus more on coordinated programming and funding to prevent war and relapse into conflict, speakers in the Security Council said today.

Since the outbreak of war in 2013, both sides in South Sudan had engaged in actions that met criteria for the imposition of targeted sanctions, the Security Council heard today, as senior United Nations officials offered rare frontline views into the violence gripping the country and stunted progress towards the formation of a Transitional Government of National Unity.

The Israeli-Palestinian-Israeli conflict had reached a pivotal point, and with no signs of an end to the violence that erupted in October, the onus was on both sides to shape their future before the opponents of peace decided their fate for them, the Secretary-General’s Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process told the Security Council today.

The Chair of the “751/1907” Somalia-Eritrea Sanctions Committee provided an update to the Security Council today on the recent findings of its Monitoring Group, as delegates called for improved coordination to staunch the illegal charcoal trade in Somalia, and pressed Eritrea for “frank and sincere” cooperation over its reported involvement in the Yemen conflict, support for armed groups in Ethiopia and progress on the question of Djibouti war prisoners.

The security situation in Yemen had deteriorated since the first round of peace talks two months ago, the Secretary-General’s Special Envoy told the Security Council today, stressing that a new cessation of hostilities and spirit of compromise would pave the way for a fresh round of talks and agreements on the country’s return to a peaceful and orderly transition.

The drawn-out political crisis in Guinea-Bissau was taking a toll on development and could only get worse in the absence of “a frank and sincere dialogue” involving all parties concerned, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative for the West African country told the Security Council today.

After nearly a year of fighting that had caused immeasurable suffering in Yemen, it was more urgent than ever to address the human catastrophe unfolding in that war-torn country, United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator Stephen O’Brien told the Security Council today, urging it to impress upon the warring parties the importance of facilitating unconditional humanitarian access and protecting civilians.

The humanitarian crisis in Iraq was expected “to widen and worsen” in 2016, despite some recent success in rolling back Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL/Da’esh), the senior United Nations official in that country told the Security Council today.

Speakers today called for the United Nations to strike a balance between the fundamental principle of State sovereignty and the need to protect human rights, as the Security Council held a day-long debate on the tenets of the Organization’s Charter.