Global Policy Forum

Boutros Boutros-Ghali

Report covering the period September 1995-August 1996

During the period under review, the Security Council has continued to meet, on an almost daily basis, to review the issues on its agenda, to warn about the threats to peace around the world, to call on antagonists to restrain their ardour for combat, to take various types of action to control and resolve conflicts, and to muster regional and international support for those measures.

Towards these objectives, the Security Council has demonstrated a determination to unify its ranks in order to address more effectively the various complex issues that confront it today. One of the Council's greatest contributions has been its patient and deliberate search for consensus within its own ranks. This positive trend has enabled Council members to approach the issues on its agenda with a greater degree of harmony and cohesion.

The main focus of the Security Council's concern has been the former Yugoslavia and central Africa. In the former Yugoslavia the Council endeavoured to defuse the conflicts, prevent their further spread and mitigate their impact on civilian populations.To that end, it addressed many issues, including the changing peace-keeping role of the United Nations, humanitarian emergencies, mass violations of human rights and the difficult issues arising from the use of United Nations troops to protect humanitarian relief deliveries. The Council also offered active support to efforts by interested Member States, in particular those comprising the Contact Group, as well as the International Conference on the Former Yugoslavia, to bring about negotiated solutions to the conflicts in the region. The Council continued to make active use of mandatory sanctions as a means of achieving the above purposes. The Council's determination to ensure the resolution of the crises in a comprehensive way, as well as to strengthen cooperation between the United Nations and relevant regional organizations, in particular the European Union (EU) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), still offers the best hope of bringing to an end the human tragedy in the former Yugoslavia.

At the beginning of the period under review, the Security Council had authorized the deployment of six major peace-keeping operations in Africa, more than in any other continent. Four of them remain, the one in Mozambique having completed its mandate with conspicuous success and the one in Somalia having been withdrawn after it had succeeded in its humanitarian efforts but had been denied the necessary cooperation of the Somali parties with efforts to promote national reconciliation. In addition to the four remaining peace-keeping operations, in Angola, Liberia, Rwanda and Western Sahara, the Council has been concerned with peace-making efforts in other African countries, especially Burundi and Sierra Leone. During the period under review the Council dispatched an unprecedented number of missions, all of them to African destinations: Burundi (twice), Mozambique, Rwanda, Somalia and Western Sahara. The conflicts in Africa, like those in the former Yugoslavia, are primarily internal, but they have major implications for the security of the subregions concerned. As in the former Yugoslavia, they have disastrous humanitarian consequences, and the Council has had to devote as much attention to alleviating the misery of the civilian populations affected as to efforts to control and resolve the conflicts. Cooperation with the Organization of African Unity (OAU) and with subregional organizations in Africa has been an important feature of the Security Council's efforts.

Seven sanctions regimes remain in effect and generate much work for the Council. In order to ensure the adequate servicing of the various sanctions committees and the expeditious processing by the Secretariat of applications for humanitarian supplies, I have reinforced the unit responsible in the Department of Political Affairs. For their part, the sanctions committees, drawing on their own experience, have initiated measures to streamline their working procedures and to ensure greater transparency in the conduct of their work in conformity with a set of measures decided by the Security Council (see S/1995/234).

Cooperation on sanctions with regional organizations has been important, with special reference to the contributions of the Organization of American States (OAS) in Haiti and of EU and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in the former Yugoslavia. The temporary assignment of liaison officers from the EU/OSCE Sanctions Assistance Missions Communications Centre has provided the Secretariat and the relevant committees with customs expertise and with advice on the practical implementation and monitoring of sanctions. Member States could further assist the efforts of the committees and the Secretariat by screening more effectively their nationals' applications to the committees and by cooperating in further streamlining of the committees' procedures.

In order to ensure that sanctions remain a credible instrument for promoting international peace and security, Member States will need to address a range of problems encountered in the implementation of sanctions. Recommendations in this regard were put forward in my Supplement to "An Agenda for Peace" (A/50/60-S/1995/1).

The Security Council's methods of work received consideration during an extensive debate on the annual report of the Council to the General Assembly at its forty-ninth session. Member States exchanged views on a broad range of issues related to the functioning of the Council. The Council made known its intention, as part of its efforts to improve the flow of information and the exchange of ideas between members of the Council and other Member States, to have increased recourse to open meetings, in particular at an early stage in its consideration of a subject, on a case-by-case basis. The Council has already initiated the holding of orientation debates. Briefings by the President of the Security Council for States non-members of the Council have become institutionalized.

In the face of persisting conflict in Africa, Europe and elsewhere, the Security Council has demonstrated that it remains committed to the goals of strengthening peaceful and cooperative relations between Member States and helping communities within States to live peacefully with one another, to rebuild and to work towards stable and productive societies.

It must be emphasized, however, that only if the decisions of the Security Council enjoy the full support of the international community, and only if the parties to the conflict carry out those decisions in full, can the Council fulfil its responsibilities under the Charter to maintain and consolidate international peace and security.