Security Council

While they praised the overall efforts of Peacebuilding Commission to meet its mandated objectives as a platform for galvanizing action and aligning long-term support for post-conflict countries, members of the Security Council today acknowledged the 5-year-old body’s growing pains, as it endeavoured to meet the extremely high expectations placed on it, increase its visibility in the field and strengthen interaction with other actors in and outside the United Nations.

The following statement by the Chairman of the Security Council Working Group on Children and Armed Conflict was issued in New York, 22 March:

The incoming Chair of the Committee established to monitor sanctions on Iran related to its nuclear programme reported two new cases of alleged violations of those sanctions as he gave his first 90-day report to the Security Council this afternoon, the seventeenth such report since the Committee’s establishment.

Stressing the importance of a comprehensive approach to challenges in Afghanistan and affirming the need to reinforce Afghan ownership of those efforts, the Security Council this morning extended the mandate of the United Nations Assistance Mission in the country, known as UNAMA, for one year, until 23 March 2012.

Amid a sharp spike in violence between Israelis and Palestinians — including the “alarming escalation” over the weekend of rocket fire from the Gaza Strip into Israeli civilian areas and the ensuing Israel air strikes that left three Palestinians dead — a senior United Nations political official today told the Security Council that the international community must make a “decisive” effort to ease tensions and bring the parties back to the negotiating table.

The following statement by the Chairman of the Security Council Working Group on Children and Armed Conflict was issued in New York, 18 March:

Demanding an immediate ceasefire in Libya, including an end to the current attacks against civilians, which it said might constitute “crimes against humanity”, the Security Council this evening imposed a ban on all flights in the country’s airspace — a no-fly zone — and tightened sanctions on the Qadhafi regime and its supporters.

In order to facilitate what it called urgently needed humanitarian assistance in Somalia, the Security Council decided this morning to ease its assets freeze on the beleaguered Horn of Africa nation for 16 months.

The Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Afghanistan called for full international support to the planned transition to Afghan responsibility for security, governance and development in the troubled country as he addressed the Security Council this morning during a debate on that situation.

With the election process gearing up and refugees flooding in from neighbouring Côte d’Ivoire, the increasingly complex situation in Liberia required sustained international attention, even though progress continued, Ellen Margrethe Løj, Special Representative of the Secretary-General, said today in a briefing to the Security Council.