On 6 June 2019, The Security Council (SC) met in its annual session to discuss working methods of the body. The President of the SC for June 2019 is Kuwait, who is also the current chair of the Working Group on Documentation and Other Procedural Questions (IWG), the sub organ of the SC which discusses and reports on procedural practices of the SC with the aim towards improving the body. The open debate began with briefings from Ms. Karin Landgren, Executive Director of The Security Council Report, and Dr. James Cockayne, Director of the UN University Centre for Policy Research(UNU-CPR). Also in attendance were many member states (MS), who made statements at the end of the meeting.
The Security Council Report (external link) is a non-profit based out of New York which reports on SC policies, politics, and working methods with an eye towards increasing the effectiveness and transparency of the body. To this end, Ms. Landgren spoke to improving the body in the face of recent failures of the organization to respond to crises (as per its mandate) and as a reaction to the global increase of distrust towards international and multilateral organizations and policies. Her suggests took three approaches: 1) strengthening the role of the elected members of the Council (the E10), 2) enhancing engagement with wider UN membership, and 3) improving the Council’s mandating of peace operations and preventative measures. The specific steps outlined for addressing all three areas all followed the same theme of increasing the involvement of non-p5 stakeholders in the Council’s processes. Measures such as deepening interaction around the SC’s annual report to the General Assembly (GA) and increasing the role of the E10 in chairing subsidiary bodies would improve the SC’s decisions’ legitimacy and transparency to the increasingly skeptical global community. Potential changes such as allowing interested MS to participate in closed informal consultations and increasing the use of informal Arria-Formula Meetings would allow for the discussion of sensitive topics previously deemed off-limits due to the paralyzing effect of P5 politics. Many of Ms. Langren’s concerns and suggestions would later be re-iterated by MS in their own statements.
Dr. Cockayne, for his part, did a deep dive into sanctions committee working methods, discussing ways to strengthen SC sanctions against due process challenges. Sanctions being one of the SC main tools for maintaining peace and security; he demonstrated that there is a need to restructure the ways in which the decisions are made in order to immunize SC sanctions policies from attempts to undermine them at a national level. Dr. Cockayne presented research which demonstrated that the greatest contests to the due process of SC sanctions come from national parliaments. His report broke them down into three historical “waves” of challenges, one which is currently ongoing making the subject of protecting against such challenges timely and important. UNU-CPR research showed that challenges to sanctions listings could be avoided by ensuring that two conditions were met: that the working methods allowed the protected party to be heard and that the process included an impartial review of the fact-base for the listing.
Cockayne warned that the due to the specific, pragmatic needs of each of the types of sanctions contexts, no universal working methods would work best. However, increasing the transparency of the process and open access to information, ensuring the perceived trustworthiness and impartiality of the mediating reviewer, and constantly reviewing listings would protect the decisions in all cases, no matter the modalities taken to implement the conditions. One modality mentioned by Cockayne and other MSs was to increase the mandate of the Office of the Ombudsperson. The position, created in 2009 by S/RES/1904 (resolution attached below), is designed as a non-partisan party to reviews requests from individuals or groups from removal of the Al-Quaeda list and was broadened to include ISIL sanctions as well. However, Dr Cockayne did warn that this would not be effective and therefore suitable in all cases.
During MS statements, South Africa spoke on behalf of the elected members of the SC (the “E10”), New Zealand spoke on behalf of a group of former E10 nations, and Switzerland spoke on behalf of the Accountability, Coherence, and Transparency Group (ACT), Sweden spoke on behalf of the Group of Like-Minded States on Targeted Sanctions. Statements by these groups and single MS tended towards the themes of equalizing the workload of the SC amongst members, increasing the involvement of civil society organizations, women, and non-elected members (especially troop contributing countries), and showing support of S/2010/507 (external link to UNSC website), a resolution spearheaded by Japan designed to reform the SC working methods for increased effectiveness and accountability.
A few countries made mention of more controversial topics, such as the veto. France and Mexico encouraged states to sign their pledge to voluntarily abstain from its use when war crimes and crimes against humanity are in question. Similarly, ACT members encouraged the assembly to sign the ACT Code of Conduct, which adherers pledge to never vote against any credible draft resolution intended to prevent or halt mass atrocity.
A full video of the meeting can be viewed on the UN’s website here.
The official UN press coverage of the meeting, which includes summaries of all MS statements, can be found here on their website.
The research for Dr. Cockayne’s presentation is available on the UNU-CPR website, or attached at the bottom of this page.
