STATEMENT BY H.E. AMBASSADOR BURHAN GAFOOR, PERMANENT REPRESENTATIVE OF SINGAPORE TO THE UNITED NATIONS, ON AGENDA ITEM 27 “THE REPORT OF THE SECURITY COUNCIL”, 30 JUNE 2023, NEW YORK

1 Thank you very much, Mr President, for convening this important annual debate. I thank you also for your very comprehensive and detailed statement at the outset of our meeting. I thank also the President of the Security Council for the month of June, Permanent Representative of the UAE, H.E. Lana Nusseibeh, for introducing the report of the Security Council on behalf of all members of the Council. I also acknowledge the role played by Brazil for  coordinating the preparation of the annual report.

Mr President,

2 This annual debate is an important exercise in transparency and accountability.  The Security Council acts on behalf of all 193 member states of the United Nations.  Article 24 of the Charter makes it clear that members of the United Nations confer on the Security Council primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security. This act of “conferring” establishes the responsibility of the Security Council to send a report to members of the General Assembly. Furthermore, Article 15 of the Charter establishes the responsibility of the General Assembly to receive and consider the report of the Security Council, which is precisely what we are doing today in the General Assembly, i.e. considering the report of the Security Council.  The relationship of sending and receiving a report, as defined by the Charter, is fundamentally an exercise in transparency and accountability. 

3 To put it differently, members of the General Assembly have the responsibility to hold to account members of the Security Council for their actions as well as their inaction.  The debate today is therefore fundamental to the functioning of both the Security Council and the General Assembly.  I am therefore heartened to see that so many delegations have asked to speak at this important annual debate today.

4 The debate today also provides all members an opportunity to review the performance of the Security Council, and provide views on how the Council could improve its work and effectiveness in discharging its responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security. My remarks today should therefore not be taken as criticism of the Council or its members but rather as a constructive contribution made in the spirit of improving, or attempting to improve, the effective functioning of the Security Council.

5 Before turning to the substance of the report, I would first like to say a few words on process. We welcome the fact that the Council met its commitment set out in Note 997 to adopt its report by the 30^th of May in time for its consideration by the General Assembly immediately thereafter. However, we note that the annual debate this year is taking place three weeks later than the debate last year. Last year, the debate took place on 9 June. We therefore call on the Security Council to adopt its annual report well before the deadline of 30^th May  so that the General Assembly can consider the report in early June.

Mr President,

6 The General Assembly will also, in a few weeks, adopt its latest resolution on “Revitalisation of the Work of the General Assembly”. In that resolution, there is a paragraph that reiterates the importance of the Security Council continuing its efforts to provide its annual report to the General Assembly in time for the latter’s consideration in June. It is therefore important that members of the Security Council take this commitment seriously.

7 My next point is on the Council’s monthly assessment reports. Here, I would like to draw your attention to paragraph 9 of the annual report of the Security Council, which says that “further information on the work of the Council and more detailed reports of its meetings can be found in the monthly assessments of its work”.  The annual report therefore makes an explicit reference to the monthly assessment reports and asks us to refer to these monthly assessments for further details.  However, the unfortunate situation is that only eight members submitted their monthly assessment reports in 2022.  In other words, four monthly assessment reports are missing, namely for the months of February, May, October and November 2022.  How are we to assess the work of the Council when the monthly assessment reports are missing? How are we to obtain the details necessary if the monthly reports are incomplete? In 2021, only seven members submitted their monthly assessment reports. This year, there is a slight improvement with eight members who submitted their monthly assessment reports.  But what is clear is that there is a trend of Council members who are not preparing or finalising their monthly assessment reports.  It is not clear to me what exactly is the difficulty of preparing and submitting the monthly assessment reports.  We propose and would like to request the President of the Council to take up this issue with the members of the Council, and that the President of the Council preparing the next annual report address this issue explicitly in the report to be submitted next year. To put it bluntly, we as members of the General Assembly, have the right and the responsibility to ask all Council members to submit their monthly assessment reports. The monthly assessment reports are useful to the wider membership, especially to smaller states and smaller missions, as a way of following the work of the Council, and these reports form an important and regular means of providing transparency and accountability to the work of the Council.

8 We note that of the four monthly assessment reports not submitted last year, two were under the presidencies of permanent members of the Council.  In other words, two permanent members did not submit their monthly assessment reports. In both months, February and May 2022, vetoes were cast on important issues that would have merited at least a mention in the annual report, and therefore it would have been useful to obtain the monthly assessment reports. We do not understand why the permanent members, with all their resources and personnel at their disposal, are unable to prepare and finalise their monthly assessment reports.  Let me add that, in the five years since 2018, one particular permanent member of the Security Council has consistently not submitted monthly reports. I find it deeply disappointing that some permanent members are not showing any sense of responsibility with regard to submitting the monthly assessment reports.

9 Let me take this opportunity to note that at this very important annual debate, a debate that is important for all members of the General Assembly as an exercise in transparency and accountability, not all permanent members are even present in this hall. This is a sign of deep disrespect to the members of the General Assembly. When the annual report of the Security Council is being discussed, they did not even find it fitting to grace us with their presence. Let me therefore say that permanent members should not take their privilege for granted.  I urge all Council members, permanent and as well as elected members, to submit their monthly reports in a timely fashion before the end of the calendar year.

10 With regard to the monthly assessment reports, let me echo the view expressed by the permanent representative of Norway who spoke earlier, that that the monthly assessment reports need not be adopted by consensus. These reports can therefore be taken as representing the views of the President of the Council for that month, and therefore we do not see how and why it should be difficult to prepare these reports. We would like to underline the need to have all the monthly assessment reports submitted on time and we would like to see all monthly assessment reports prepared and finalised when we consider the annual report next year. This is a point that my delegation has been raising consistently year after year, but we have not seen significant progress. There is a structural problem, or perhaps a political problem that we need to address. I call on the President of the Security Council to address this issue with seriousness, with urgency, and not treat the annual report ta as a box-ticking exercising, as was stated by the President of the General Assembly in his opening remarks this morning.

11 Turning to the substance of the report, let me start by commending the Council for its key achievements in 2022. Notably, the Council adopted an important resolution, S/RES/2664, that created humanitarian carveouts for sanctions. Given the current backdrop of global food insecurity and rising prices, these carveouts are essential in ensuring that ordinary people are not affected by sanctions measures.

12 I also want to commend Albania for its work as the current chair of the Informal Working Group on Documentation and Other Procedural Questions (IWG), in particular in examining how the Council might better engage non-Council members and other bodies of the UN. So there has been some progress and good work, and I want to acknowledge that too. The IWG contributes to improving the transparency and accountability of the Council under the chairmanship of Albania. I wish to commend Japan, previous IWG Chair and current Vice-Chair, for its efforts to develop a web-based interactive handbook of the Security Council’s working methods. I note that the launch of this product is taking place today and will be co-hosted by IWG chairs past and present. I wish to thank all of them for their good work done over the years in order to bridge the gap between the Council and other member states. I hope that successive IWG chairs will continue the good work that has been done in this year.

13 Mr President, for several years now, member states have been asking the Council to produce a more analytical report that goes beyond a mere description of the number of meetings and the number of decisions adopted, and many other speakers before me also echoed the same point. Once again, the annual report has failed to produce any assessment or analysis.  In that regard, once again, the Council has failed to deliver on the expectations of the members of the General Assembly.  It is therefore important that we, here in the General Assembly, provide that assessment and analysis because that is missing and that is probably not going to come from the Council.  Therefore, I would like to share some of my own thoughts and assessments as a contribution to the debate today. 

14 In particular, I would like to address the issue of growing Council disunity. It is a reality that the Council has been increasingly unable to find consensus, particularly on issues of concern for the maintenance of international peace and security. The best example of Council disunity is on the issue of Ukraine.  On 27 February 2022, the Council adopted Resolution 2623 calling for an emergency special session of the General Assembly using the “Uniting for Peace” procedure, which was the first time such a resolution had been adopted in the last 40 years.  This is a significant development that should have been acknowledged and elaborated in the report. The fact that the Security Council has been unable to adopt a single resolution on the invasion of Ukraine is a significant example of Council disunity, and yet we find no assessment in the annual report on the situation or the geopolitical dynamics that has led to the paralysis within the Council, in particular on the issue of Ukraine. 

15 If we analyse of the use of the veto in 2022, we can again see the same trend of increasing Council disunity.  In 2021, there was only one veto.  However, the Council had four draft resolutions last year that were vetoed.  Several cases of vetoes cast last year were on issues that concerned the international peace and security of member states around the world, including provocative launches of ballistic missiles by a member state, and a full-scale invasion of one member state by no less than a permanent member of the Council.  Another veto led to the delay of the provision of critical humanitarian aid, but we note that the annual report focused on the subsequent successful adoption of the Resolution 2642 without mention of the fact that the mandate had been allowed to expire before a solution was found.  In all these areas of critical importance, the Council in some ways has failed the international community in providing direction and solutions in line with international law and the UN Charter.  Yet the annual report mentioned these vetoes only in a cursory and statistical fashion, without any analysis of what led to the failure of the Security Council in finding consensus. The reality is that discussions on draft resolutions are conducted in closed meetings, and this contributes to the perceived lack of transparency surrounding the Council’s work.  In this situation, the veto initiative, initiated and led by Liechtenstein and several other delegations, has been a lifesaver and has become a very vital tool in providing greater transparency and accountability each time a veto is cast.

16 The lack of unity within the Council, especially among the permanent members, is of course a reflection of the deep geopolitical divide confronting the world today.  The division and polarisation cannot be wished away; it is a geopolitical reality and fact that we have to deal with.  But I want to point out that regrettably, the permanent members are usually able to achieve unity when it comes to protecting their own privileges.  Let me give you a recent example.  Just last Friday, members of the General Assembly concluded informal negotiations on the text of the biennial resolution “Revitalisation of the Work of the General Assembly”.  In that negotiations, my delegation had put forward a proposal to outline and describe the process for the selection of the UN Secretary-General.  This was a simple proposal intended to capture and summarise the existing procedure related to the selection process of the Secretary-General and intended to introduce greater transparency in the selection of the Secretary-General.  Not surprisingly, the five permanent members blocked this proposal ostensibly because they saw this proposal as a threat to their privilege of making decisions behind closed doors, with no transparency and with no accountability.  The trend that is clear is that permanent members only show great unity when it comes to protecting their own privileges.  My message to the five permanent members is a simple one: we would like greater unity from you, not in protecting your privileges, but in protecting the interests of all member states. 

17 I think that it is also time for the annual report to provide deeper analysis into the issue of sanctions.  The current report notes that sanctions regimes “remained an important tool for the Council”, and that 10 sanctions regimes were renewed last year, and a new one established.  However, in reporting on the renewal of these sanctions regimes, the annual report by and large failed to note emerging patterns of abstentions on sanctions renewals.  This is a trend that is worth monitoring and highlighting.  If we study where these abstentions are coming from, it appears that these are from Council members from within the same region as the sanctioned countries.  In their interventions, some Council members have explained that they do not  believe sanctions in those cases to be effective, and could even be harmful.  These are important views and trends that warrant an analysis or at least a factual assessment by the annual report, in order to help the wider membership in understanding the full context of developments in the Council regarding sanctions.  I am not at this point making a judgement on each sanctions decision but I am using this as another example of how selective reporting and lack of analysis in the annual report could lead to misleading conclusions.

Mr President,

18 It is very important that the introduction of the annual report provides an overview of key developments, trends, and significant outcomes.  In this regard, I would like to propose that the member  of the Council coordinating and drafting the annual report should consult the wider membership of the United Nations.  We call for an interactive dialogue and discussion with the wider membership, in particular on the drafting of  the introduction of the annual report of the Security Council. Such an interactive dialogue with the wider membership could help to improve the quality of assessment and analysis of the annual report.  The proposal that I am making is not a farfetched one.  In making this proposal, I would like to draw attention of members of the General Assembly to paragraph 129 of Note 507, which reads “While drafting the introduction to the report, the member of the Council preparing the introduction…. may also consider organising, where appropriate, interactive informal exchanges of views with the wider membership”.  So the proposal I am making is rooted in paragraph 129 of Note 507 calling on the member preparing the report to consider organising exchanges of views with the wider membership.  I would therefore like to put it to members of the Council and the President of the Council to consider this proposal emanating from paragraph 129 of Note 507 in a serious way and to find a way of organising an interactive exchange with wider membership on the introduction to the annual report.

Mr President,

19 I am happy that the Council had an increase in the number of public meetings last year.  This trend is good as it would allow the wider membership to also contribute to the work of the Security Council.  But at the same time, the scope of discussions on emerging issues appears to have shrunk a little.  At a time when the General Assembly is considering the future of the UN, including the Summit of the Future, the Council needs to ensure that it maintains its relevance and credibility  by discussing issues for the maintenance of peace and security from a multi-dimensional perspective.  For instance, discussion on the nexus between climate change and peace and security dwindled in 2022, with only one Council debate on the topic, compared to three high-level meetings in 2021.  This is despite calls from many member states, particularly the small states and Small Island Developing States, for the Council to act on this issue of climate related security issues which affects issues of peace and security.  It is encouraging that we have made an improvement since the start of 2023, with Malta’s event on sea-level rise in February, and the UAE which organised an event on climate change earlier this month. These are relevant topics which enhances the relevance of the work of the Security Council and contributes to strengthening the multilateral system.  I want to take this opportunity to thank elected members for bringing topics of relevance to the table, and encouraging the Council to step out of its comfort zone of considering traditional issues of peace and security.

20 This brings me to my next point.  I would like to stress once again the importance of analysing the role played by elected members in the Council, in the annual report.  After all, members are elected in the General Assembly to serve in the Security Council.  It is only fair and reasonable that we also look at the work of elected members in the Council.  It seems clear to me that elected members have by and large made a positive contribution.  It is elected members who have been responsible for injecting fresh ideas into the Council, by drawing links between emerging issues of peace and security and other emerging issues.  If you look at Resolution 1325 (2000) which first put the Women, Peace and Security Agenda on the Council’s agenda,[2] it was an elected member, Namibia, that led  this proposal. Also the more recent initiatives such as climate-related security risks.  We are encouraged by the fact that elected members contribute to increasing the relevance of the Council, or at least they have contributed to pushing the boundaries of discussions within the Security Council.  I hope that their contributions can be more systematically recorded in the annual report.

21 At the same time, elected members are prevented from leading on key issues due to the infamous ‘penholdership’ where some permanent members monopolise the ‘pen’ on key issues.  It would be useful for the annual report to provide more details on discussions on the distribution of penholdership, including a chart showing the distribution of pen for that year, so that we as members outside the Council can track trends over time.  On Singapore’s part, we would certainly like to see elected members hold the pen on more issues, and on key issues, in particular issues related to their respective regions.

Mr President,

22 Let me conclude by reiterating that the timely submission of the annual report of the Security Council and its consideration by the General Assembly is a critical exercise in transparency and accountability.  We hope the areas where the Council had done well in 2022 will become entrenched and become regular practice. At the same time, we look forward to the Council members, both permanent and elected, continuing to push the boundaries to further improve its working methods, quality of discussions, and also quality of the annual report, because ultimately, the work of the Council is crucial for the maintenance of international peace and security on our planet.

23 I thank you for your attention.

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