S/PV.7838 Security Council

The Security Council will now begin its consideration of the item on its agenda. Members of the Council have before them document S/2016/1061, which contains the text of a draft resolution submitted by the United States of America. 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. A vote was taken by show of hands. In favour: Angola, China, Egypt, France, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Russian Federation, Senegal, Spain, Ukraine, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, United States of America, Uruguay and Venezuela (Bolivarian Republic of)

The draft resolution received 15 votes in favour. The draft resolution has been adopted unanimously as resolution 2326 (2016). I shall now give the floor to the member of the Council who wishes to make a statement following the voting.

The Russian delegation was surprised by this resolution, submitted by the United States, which extends the mandate of the United Nations Mission in the Republic of South Sudan for just one day. That is all the more surprising given that the sponsors had sufficient time to come to agreement on the resolution. Not a single round of consultations was held, and the concerns of other delegations had been set out fairly clearly and repeatedly. Once again, this leads us to the conclusion concerning the detrimental effect of the current penholder system, when three Security Council delegations took over the process of preparing Council decisions. We hope that Council members will take on board our initiative on reviewing the penholder arrangement.