Security Council

The Security Council had undertaken a significant amount of work over the past month, including several well-attended debates, Mohammad Masood Khan (Pakistan), that body’s outgoing President, said today at a Headquarters press conference.

As he briefed the Security Council today on the institutional changes the United Nations was putting in place to bolster its rule-of-law activities, Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson said that, while the effort was delivering results, broader support for improved data collection was needed so the Organization could better measure impact on the ground, especially in countries affected by conflict.

The following Security Council press statement was issued today by Council President Mohammad Masood Khan (Pakistan):

Urging broad-based support as Libya and its people pressed ahead with a challenging political transition, the top United Nations official in the country warned the Security Council today that, despite promising institutional reforms, the new Libyan authorities would still need to take tough decisions on such key issues as constitution-making, transitional justice and security sector reform.

The following Security Council press statement was issued today by Council President Masood Khan (Pakistan):

Urging the Security Council to maintain its strong support for the leaders and countries of West Africa, the Head of the United Nations Office there called for greater international attention to a raft of complex challenges plaguing the region, where notable political progress was being offset by the ongoing crisis in Mali and the rise of organized crime and terrorism in the Sahel and other areas.

The Security Council today extended the mandate of the United Nations Integrated Peacebuilding Office in the Central African Republic until 31 January 2014, with a strong emphasis on restoring security to that country seeking to recover from the ruins of decades of instability, as well as a recent month-long crisis during which rebel groups had advanced on the capital before being halted by a ceasefire and other agreements.

Reporting that the Sudanese Government and one of the main rebel factions in Darfur had just reached agreement on an agenda for negotiating a comprehensive peace in the restive western region of Sudan, a senior United Nations peacekeeping official told the Security Council that notwithstanding that positive development, the international community must ensure that all parties — including armed groups outside the peace process — remained committed to achieving a durable solution.

Adoption in the Security Council this morning of a resolution to extend for a further six months, until 31 July 2013, the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus, first established in 1964, received the support of 14 members, while one delegation, that of Azerbaijan, had abstained.

In a briefing to the Security Council this morning, the top United Nations official in Burundi praised the Central African country’s continued progress in consolidating peace and stability, but he cautioned that, with critical elections on the horizon, sustained international political engagement would be required to effectively remedy the two-year standoff between the Government and opposition parties, and ease the lingering economic hardships facing the Burundian people.