Security Council: Meetings Coverage

The Security Council decided today to extend the terms of office of 21 judges of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, established in the wake of the Balkans conflicts in the 1990s.

The head of the committee charged with monitoring sanctions imposed on Iran over its nuclear programme reported this afternoon on alleged violations of those measures, as some Security Council members called for investigation into reports of Iranian arms flows to conflict areas in its region and warned of dangers posed by the country’s continued stonewalling of the United Nations nuclear watchdog agency.

Ongoing reported violence in Darfur could constitute new charges of war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court told Security Council members today, urging swift action to save lives and repair a war-weary region by bringing the perpetrators to justice.

As cooperation between peacekeeping missions was increasingly in demand and more frequently used in times of both calm and crisis, the United Nations peacekeeping operations chief told the Security Council today that the measure should be used only as a flexible, temporary tool of necessity, not of choice.

The Security Council this afternoon decided to extend the term of office of five judges of the Appeals Chamber of the international tribunal established in the wake of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, until 31 December 2014, or completion of the cases to which they have been assigned, if sooner.

Demanding that the Government of Liberia fulfil its obligations to freeze the financial assets of former President Charles Taylor and his associates, the Security Council this afternoon extended for 12 months the sanctions regime on the country, along with the mandate of the expert panel monitoring the measures.

In a high-level meeting on the Sahel this morning, the Security Council called for the finalization of an integrated strategy for the North-African region encompassing security, governance, human rights, humanitarian needs and development, while it strongly condemned terrorism, human rights abuses and the destruction of historic sites in Mali.

The outgoing members of the Security Council — India, Germany, Portugal, Colombia and South Africa — delivered briefings this morning on the work of the subsidiary bodies they had chaired during their two-year tenure.

The President of the new global mechanism for criminal tribunals tasked with prosecuting war crimes committed during the Balkan wars of the 1990s and the 1994 Rwanda genocide today told the Security Council that making criminal justice sustainable in the long run greatly depended on demonstrating that it could be efficient, effective and affordable for the international community.

As the international community considered responses to the multiple crises in Mali, including authorization of an African-led military force, Malians themselves needed to be at the centre of efforts to restore their democracy to health and fully recover their territory, the United Nations political affairs chief told the Security Council this morning.