Security Council: Meetings Coverage

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.

Yemenis had learned that the “gun as a tool to answer the legitimate aspirations has passed, and a peaceful solution can emerge from the ashes of conflict”, the United Nations top official in that country told the Security Council today in a briefing on recent developments.

With women caught in the crossfire in Mali, Syria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and other conflict-affected countries, the world must ramp up support and efforts to ensure their vital voices were heard, heeded and included in peacekeeping and peacebuilding, and beyond, top United Nations officials told the Security Council today during a day-long debate on women and peace and security.

The Security Council this morning commended Sierra Leone on the holding of successful presidential, parliamentary, district and local elections, calling upon all political parties and candidates to accept the results and to work with the Government in a constructive manner, through national dialogue and reconciliation.

The United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq remained an important factor in helping that country to “stay the course” and complete its transition to an inclusive, stable and prosperous democracy in the face of a national political stalemate and regional turmoil that had left it vulnerable to extremist violence, the Mission chief Martin Kobler told the Security Council today.

Failure to resolve security, economic and political problems in South Sudan continued to have a direct impact on the country’s fragile stability and security, the United Nations’ top peacekeeping official told the Security Council this morning during a briefing on recent events.

Reiterating its demand for an end to any and all outside support to the insurgency ravaging the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Security Council today renewed until 1 February 2014 the arms embargo and related sanctions on that country, and requested the Secretary-General to extend the mandate of the Group of Experts monitoring those measures.

Strong Security Council support for a new phase of genuine dialogue in Kosovo was needed in order to ensure that both sides could firmly seize the opportunity to build a stable future, the top United Nations official there said today as he delivered a briefing on recent events.