Security Council: Meetings Coverage

The senior United Nations official in Kosovo and Security Council members alike today hailed last April’s historic agreement between that territory and Serbia as a step towards normalized bilateral relations, stability in the Balkan region and integration into the European Union.

The Hague branch of the new global residual mechanism for criminal tribunals tasked with prosecuting war crimes committed during the 1990s Balkans wars and the 1994 Rwanda genocide was set to assume the functions of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia on 1 July, as scheduled, the President of both of those bodies assured the Security Council this afternoon.

“Yemen is in the heart of its transition,” the Secretary-General’s Special Adviser on that country told the Security Council today, while cautioning that there were no guarantees for what lay ahead.

The Security Council today welcomed the launch on 3 June of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Somalia, which, the Secretary-General says in his latest report, is a “fresh start” in United Nations engagement in that strife-torn nation, as it is based on a vision underpinned by current needs and opportunities and reinforces the scope for new partnerships and funding requirements.

It was long past time for the Security Council to act with “courage and conviction” by adopting measures to ensure that those responsible for grave atrocities in Darfur were brought to justice sooner rather than later, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court told the 15-member body today, as she presented her latest report on the conflict-ridden region in Sudan.

Emphasizing the importance of credible, fact-based, independent assessments, analysis, and recommendations, the Security Council this morning extended until 9 July 2014 the mandate of the Panel of Experts appointed by the Secretary-General in 2010 to assist the Committee that monitors implementation of the sanctions regime on Iran.

As it considered the situation in the Central African subregion today, the Security Council reiterated its strong condemnation of the attacks and atrocities, as well as violations of international humanitarian law and abuses of human rights, being perpetrated by the Lord’s Resistance Army, and called for an immediate end to the violence.

The Security Council today extended the mandate of the United Nations Interim Security Force for Abyei (UNISFA) until 30 November, deciding further to increase the 4,200-strong troop presence in the contested border town to 5,326 peacekeepers, as requested by Sudan and South Sudan on 8 March, through the Joint Political and Security Mechanism.

With “grave turmoil” on the ground threatening stability across the Middle East, a top United Nations official warned the Security Council today that the coming weeks would be critical on two major diplomatic fronts — negotiations to halt the increasingly bloody crisis in Syria, and ending the long-standing Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Acting on the recommendation of United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, the Security Council today extended the mandate of the United Nations Integrated Peacebuilding Office in Guinea-Bissau (UNIOGBIS) for one year, deciding also to readjust its presence so it could help the West African nation restore constitutional order following the 2012 military coup and hold elections by the end of this year.