S/PV.7040 Security Council

Under rule 37 of the Council’s provisional rules of procedure, I invite the representatives of Brazil, Canada, Chile, Haiti, Peru and Uruguay to participate in this meeting. The Security Council will now begin its consideration of the item on its agenda. Members of the Council have before them document S/2013/597, which contains the text of a draft resolution submitted by Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, France, Guatemala, Morocco, Peru, Rwanda, Togo, the United States of America and Uruguay. I wish to draw the attention of Council members to document S/2013/493, which contains the report of the Secretary-General on the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti. It is my understanding that the Council is ready to proceed to the vote on the draft resolution before it. I shall put the draft resolution to the vote now.

There were 15 votes in favour. The draft resolution has been adopted unanimously as resolution 2119 (2013). I now give the floor to those members of the Council who wish to make statements after the voting. Sir Mark Lyall Grant (United Kingdom): The United Kingdom is pleased that the Council has united around resolution 2119 (2013). The United Kingdom is a strong supporter of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), but I would like to raise two points of concern — one general and one specific. In general, MINUSTAH is the clearest example of a mismatch between the needs on the ground and the tools the Security Council uses to address them. Even after the drawdown of troops mandated in this resolution, there will still be over 5,000 military peacekeepers deployed in a country where there has been no military conflict in recent times. This makes little sense. We are concerned that some tasks that could be better managed by other elements of the United Nations system and its partners still fall to MINUSTAH to perform. This is troubling. In particular, we note the continued provision of quick-impact projects. In the United Kingdom’s view, as the MINUSTAH mandate enters its tenth year, the time has long past when there should be such a dependence on measures designed for the initial confidence-building phase of a mission. If we are still doing quick-impact projects to build confidence after 10 years, we might conclude that their impact has not, in fact, been very quick. Transitioning these tasks to long-term development experts and funds would ensure the continuity of international support to Haiti, while allowing the Mission itself to focus on providing a safe and stable environment in which this work can take place. Such an approach would be more consistent with the objective of enhanced national ownership. For this reason, while we strongly support the drawdown of MINUSTAH provided for in the resolution, we believe that there is scope for a more accelerated drawdown, in particular of engineering personnel. We are confident that this can be done in a manner which consolidates and protects security gains. We welcome the Secretary-General’s proposal to consider the reconfiguration of the Mission, and look forward to hearing more of this in his next report.

There are no more names inscribed on the list of speakers. The Security Council has thus concluded the present stage of its consideration of the item on its agenda. The Security Council will remain seized of the matter.