South Sudan

The Secretary-General has issued terms of reference for an impartial, independent mechanism to help investigate and prosecute those responsible for the most serious crimes committed in Syria since March 2011.

During its informal consultations on 18 January 2017, the Security Council Committee established pursuant to resolution 2206 (2015) concerning South Sudan discussed the Chair’s report on his visit to South Sudan, Ethiopia, Sudan and Uganda in December 2016.

In a video message to the opening of the 2017 session of the Conference on Disarmament, the Secretary-General described disarmament as an integral element of a peaceful and prosperous world, spotlighting its potentially important role in ending existing conflicts and preventing the outbreak of new strife.

The Secretary-General told President of the Gambia Adama Barrow of his full support for his determination, and the Economic Community of West African States' historic decision, with the unanimous backing of the Security Council, to restore the rule of law in the Gambia so as to honour and respect the will of the country’s people.

A report published today by the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) and the United Nations Human Rights Office details grave human rights abuses as well as serious violations of international humanitarian law committed in Juba during and after the fighting that occurred between 8 and 12 July 2016.

This morning the Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations briefed the Security Council on Darfur.  Although there been a decrease in armed conflict in Darfur, he said, civilians had remained exposed to significant sources of insecurity such as intercommunal conflict and criminality.

At its fifty-fourth meeting, on 8 May 2015, the Security Council Working Group on Children and Armed Conflict agreed, in connection with the examination of the first report of the Secretary-General on children and armed conflict in South Sudan (S/2014/884), to address the following message to all parties to the armed conflict in South Sudan, in particular the SPLA, the SPLA-IO and armed groups operating in their support such as the White Army, through a public statement by the Chair of the Working Group: