The Security Council today decided to extend, for six months, mandates of the United Nations Interim Security Force for Abyei (UNISFA) relating to the delivery of humanitarian assistance and the protection of civilians, among others, while also underlining that its tasks relating to the contested region’s Joint Border Verification and Monitoring Mechanism would be extended no further unless the parties to the dispute accelerated progress in several key areas.
Recounting the haunting stories of Rohingya refugees they met during a recent mission to Bangladesh and Myanmar, Security Council members today described mass rapes, attacks on children and the razing of entire villages, stressing that the visit had “awakened their collective conscience” into robust and concerted action.
The Security Council today stressed that the “primacy of politics” should be the hallmark of the United Nations approach to conflict resolution, with political solutions guiding the design and deployment of the Organization’s peacekeeping operations.
The following Security Council press statement was issued today by Council President Joanna Wronecka (Poland):
Rising political temperatures between Pristina and Belgrade were threatening to derail efforts to find lasting peace in Kosovo, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General told the Security Council today.
On 30 April 2018, the Security Council Committee established pursuant to resolution 1533 (2004) concerning the Democratic Republic of the Congo convened a formal meeting with a representative of the Permanent Mission of the Democratic Republic of the Congo to discuss the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s efforts in the fight against sexual violence and child recruitment.
The ongoing reconfiguration of the African Union-United Nations Hybrid Operation in Darfur (UNAMID) was having no adverse impact on security, although efforts towards a political solution to the conflict remained stalled, the Head of that Mission told the Security Council this morning as he presented the Secretary-General’s latest 60-day report on the situation there.
The following Security Council press statement was issued today by Council President Joanna Wronecka (Poland):
On 9 May 2018, the amendments specified with underline and strikethrough in the entries below were made to the ISIL (Da’esh) and Al-Qaida Sanctions List of individuals and entities subject to the assets freeze, travel ban and arms embargo set out in paragraph 1 of Security Council resolution 2368 (2017) and adopted under Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations:
On the seventieth anniversary of United Nations peacekeeping, the commanders of three of the Organization’s missions in Africa briefed the Security Council this afternoon on the increasingly complex challenges faced by Blue Helmets, emphasizing that their core role was to establish secure environments that would enable political solutions to take root.
