The Security Council today extended the mandate of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) until 31 August 2023, demanding that the relevant parties guarantee freedom of movement for the Interim Force and cease any restrictions and hindrances to the movement of its personnel.
Deeply concerned by the ongoing political stalemate in Libya and outbursts of violence in Tripoli that claimed more than 40 lives this week, a United Nations senior official told Security Council members that all parties need to support efforts to move the country toward essential elections.
The Security Council today renewed until 31 August 2023 the travel ban and asset freeze imposed through resolution 2374 (2017) against individuals and entities obstructing implementation of the 2015 Agreement on Peace and Reconciliation in Mali.
Restrictions on fundamental human rights and freedoms — especially for women and girls — are exacerbating the bleak humanitarian situation in Afghanistan, senior United Nations officials told the Security Council today, as members diverged over the international community’s optimal level of engagement with the Taliban in light of such repression.
Outlining the deepening humanitarian crisis in Syria and the threat of escalating violence, the Special Envoy for that country told the Security Council today he regretted that, during two years of frozen front lines, the international community had not seized upon the window provided by that relative calm to build a credible political process.
Speakers today urged the Security Council to consider the long-term effects of allowing the status quo to remain in the Occupied Palestinian Territory following a three-day escalation in violence earlier this month, as some members welcomed economic measures to allay the dire humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip while others stressed that this relief is no substitute for a genuine political horizon.
Despite positive progress in exporting grain and other food products from Ukraine’s ports, the people of that country and beyond urgently need peace, the Secretary-General of the United Nations told the Security Council today, as Council members took stock of the now six-month-old conflict on the thirty-first anniversary of Ukraine’s independence.
The United Nations remains gravely concerned about the dangerous situation in and around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine, Under-Secretary-General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs Rosemary DiCarlo told the Security Council today in a meeting requested by the Russian Federation and marked by emphatic calls to cease all military activities at the site.
Despite progress being made in Sudan — marked by the first International Criminal Court war crimes trial of a former Janjaweed commander — the nightmare for thousands of refugees and internally displaced persons has not ended, the Court’s top prosecutor stressed today, calling on the Security Council to urgently turn its words into action 17 years after resolution 1593 (2005).
The United Nations Secretary-General today urged Security Council members to update the diplomatic toolkit, used for decades to prevent catastrophic war, to meet the deteriorating global peace and security environment and move towards a world free of nuclear weapons. As António Guterres told Council members that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was ready to send a mission from Kyiv to the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine, Gustavo Zlauvinen, President of the Tenth Review Conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, warned members that the norm against the use of such arms, one of the most important achievements of the post-Second World War era, is increasingly threatened.
