The United Nations humanitarian affairs chief called today for the immediate establishment of a weekly, 48-hour pause in fighting so that urgently needed assistance could reach 250,000 people trapped in besieged eastern Aleppo and other hard-to-reach places in Syria.
The Security Council today authorized Member States to acquire, control, transport, transfer and destroy chemical weapons identified by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in Libya to ensure that the country’s stockpile was eliminated in the “soonest and safest” manner.
The Security Council, in a statement issued this morning, urged Lebanon’s leaders to show flexibility and to put stability and the national interest ahead of partisan politics, as it reaffirmed its call for the country’s Parliament to convene urgently to elect a new President.
The Security Council must adopt its provisional rules of procedure, regularly consult with troop- and police-contributing countries, restrict veto use and make it easier for the wider United Nations membership to access — and understand — its deliberations, speakers in the 15-member body said today, as they reported mixed reviews on efforts to improve working methods over the last decade.
One year after the adoption of an action plan on Iran’s nuclear programme, the United Nations senior political official today noted progress in its implementation, while stressing that all participants must stay the course and work through current challenges in a spirit of cooperation and compromise.
The world must recognize that Iraq was at a critical juncture, requiring more — not less — international support, the senior United Nations official there told the Security Council today, also pressing the strife-torn country to implement substantive economic, institutional and anti-corruption reforms that would place it on the road to recovery.
The Security Council must urgently consider imposing an arms embargo on South Sudan, the head of United Nations peacekeeping said today while briefing members today on the crisis evolving in that country.
The failure of Israeli and Palestinian leaders to advance peace had created a vacuum that extremists were stepping in to fill, Secretary-General Ban-Ki Moon told the Security Council today, urging both sides immediately to begin discussions with the Middle East Quartet and to coordinate with regional stakeholders in efforts to break the entrenched political impasse.
The Head of the United Nations Office for West Africa and the Sahel (UNOWAS) told the Security Council this morning that he was setting up a regional task force on the prevention of violent extremism in the region, as he appealed for greater efforts to counter the spread of terrorism and associated lawlessness.
The Central African Republic’s remarkable progress over the past two years risked being reversed unless national authorities demonstrated commitment to inclusive and transparent governance, and to addressing the root causes of the crisis afflicting the country, the Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations warned as he briefed the Security Council today.
