S/PV.8420 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/2018/1109, which contains the text of a draft resolution submitted by Côte d’Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, France, the Netherlands, Peru, Poland, Sweden, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the United States of America. The Council is ready to proceed to the vote on the draft resolution before it. I shall now make a statement before the vote in my capacity as representative of Côte d’Ivoire. I am particularly delighted to take the floor at this meeting of the Security Council, which serves as the framework for our adoption of draft resolution S/2018/1109, on police, justice and corrections. Côte d’Ivoire welcomes the forthcoming adoption of the draft resolution, the result of its exemplary cooperation with the Kingdom of the Netherlands. We thank all the States members of the Council for their positive contributions and broad commitment to the maintenance of international peace and security. It will be recalled that in May, our two countries’ shared commitment and our joint efforts to promote international peace and security led to the adoption of resolution 2417 (2018), in which the Council called the attention of the international community to the link between armed conflict and food insecurity. Côte d’Ivoire considers the draft resolution to be adopted by the Council today extremely important, in that it addresses issues that are at the heart of our recent history. The restoration and strengthening of the capacities of our police, judicial and correctional institutions were major achievements in the cooperation between my country’s Government and the United Nations Operation in Côte d’Ivoire, and were among the factors that led to the universally recognized success of United Nations action in my country. In our desire to share the many lessons learned in its 13-year experience of peacekeeping, Côte d’Ivoire has therefore undertaken the crucial task of helping to ensure that this project comes to fruition. We hope that the draft resolution will guide United Nations peacekeeping now and in the future. I now resume my functions as President of the Security Council. I shall put the draft resolution to the vote now.

The draft resolution received 15 votes in favour. The draft resolution has been adopted unanimously as resolution 2447 (2018). I now give the floor to those members of the Council who wish to make statements after the voting. I give the floor to the Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

Let me start by thanking Cote d’Ivoire for its excellent partnership on resolution 2447 (2018), as well as on resolution 2417 (2018), on conflict and hunger, which was adopted earlier this year, and on the draft resolution on improving peacekeeping mandates, which is still being negotiated. I would also like to express my gratitude to all Council members for bringing about this resolution, which is an important text that underlines the Council’s responsibility in the area of police, justice and corrections. I should like to cite our main reasons for pushing for the resolution, which so perfectly reflects the priorities of our Council membership this year, in the course of which we have constantly stressed the importance of the rule of law in preventing conflict and sustaining peace and underlined the responsibility of the Security Council in that regard. The resolution is a major step forward. First, it recognizes that there can be no lasting peace without justice. It gives the Security Council a practical tool to focus on this issue in mandates of peacekeeping operations — learning, of course, from good examples from the past, such as the special Prosecution Support Cells established by the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Without their assistance, serious crimes, including sexual violence, would have gone unpunished. I would also point to the Justice and Corrections Section of the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali, which helped improve conditions of detention in Mali, reducing human rights violations and preventing further radicalization. With the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq, we also pushed for a stronger focus on accountability in the mandate, increasing the chances for sustainable peace and stability. Secondly, the resolution very clearly assigns responsibilities where they belong. It not only invites the Security Council to adequately include tasks related to the rule of law as part of the mandate, but also urges host countries to combat impunity and promote accountability. Thirdly, the resolution stresses the importance of sound cooperation and coordination among the broad range of actors working on the rule of law in the context of peacekeeping operations, making use of joint analyses, programming and planning, as well as data, benchmarks and other evaluation tools to improve the United Nations performance and effectiveness in consolidating peace. Lastly, it underlines the importance of gender in United Nations missions and of better prevention and responses to gender-based violence. It cites the aim of doubling the number of women in the police contingents of United Nations peacekeeping operations by 2020. It will thus contribute to a goal shared by all of us around this table, that of making peacekeeping operations more effective by addressing elements across the conflict spectrum. We are proud that today, near the end of our term as a Security Council member, resolution 2447 (2018) has been adopted unanimously. It delivers perfectly on our three main priorities — prevention, better peacekeeping and accountability, and the rule of law. Indeed, it seems to embody a slogan that my country has been heard to use several times in the Council and that I will repeat again today — there can be no peace without justice.

The Russian Federation voted in favour of resolution 2447 (2018), drafted by the delegations of the Netherlands and Côte d’Ivoire, on strengthening United Nations support in the areas of police, justice and corrections in peacekeeping operations. The negotiations were not easy, especially in their initial stages. Nevertheless, the authors of the draft proved willing to listen to the conceptual concerns of other States, which helped to break the deadlock in the process. The desire to strike a balance among the interests of all 15 members of the Security Council enabled a result that initially seemed impossible, the achievement of consensus on the resolution. In that connection, I would like to thank the Netherlands and Côte d’Ivoire for the professionalism and flexibility they showed during the work on the text, which enabled the Council to present a united front. We need more such diplomatic successes in our work. We also hope that there will be a similarly constructive approach to the negotiation process on the other draft resolution, on peacekeeping, proposed by the same delegations. For the moment, unfortunately, there are still significant differences of opinion about it, which should compel us to come up with alternative options. We hope that other delegations besides the co-facilitators will respect one another’s red lines with a view to arriving at compromise solutions and unity in the Council.