S/PV.9037 Security Council

The Security Council will now begin its consideration of the item on its agenda. The Security Council will proceed to the consideration of its annual report to the General Assembly for the period from 1 January 2021 to 31 December 2021. The draft report has been provided to the members of the Council. The introduction to the draft report was prepared by the delegation of France, with the participation of the other members of the Council. The body of the report was prepared by the Secretariat. I would like to express my appreciation to France and the Secretariat for their respective contributions. I would also like to point out that the draft report was prepared in accordance with the notes by the President of 30 August 2017 (S/2017/507) and 27 December 2019 (S/2019/997). I now give the floor to the representative of France, whose delegation was responsible for drafting the introduction to this year’s annual report.

As President of the Security Council during the month of July 2021, France drafted the introduction to this year’s annual report on the activities of the Council in 2021. Thanks to the constructive commitment of all of us, the text was agreed by the January deadline. I would especially like to thank the elected members of the Council who were involved in the preparation of this report but whose mandate ended in December 2021. I also want to thank the Secretariat for its support, particularly regarding the numerous statistics provided by the Security Council Affairs Division on the activities of the Council. The drafting of the annual report is not only a mandatory task enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, but it is above all an important document for reviewing the activities of the Security Council during the previous year and opening a discussion with all Member States on how the Council has implemented its mandate. That discussion will take place as soon as next month in the General Assembly. As the annual report shows, 2021 was marked by the coronavirus disease pandemic, first as reflected in the crises on the Council’s agenda but also in terms of our working methods, which remained hybrid, with many meetings held by vide-teleconference. In the circumstances, I am pleased that the Council was able to conduct a mission to the Sahel in the autumn. It is essential to maintain contact with realities on the ground, and I hope that other field missions can be organized in the coming months. Also with regard to our working methods, I would like to point to the importance of multilingualism, which has suffered greatly during the pandemic. It is essential to ensure that all the work of the Council, including its subsidiary bodies and Arria Formula meetings, benefits from interpretation into the six official languages of the United Nations. We will continue to be vigilant about that. In 2021, the Security Council once again fulfilled its mandate to maintain international peace and security by seeking to be ever more inclusive and productive. I am pleased that we have seen increasing numbers of women addressing the Security Council, but there is still a long way to go to achieve parity. The participation of civil society in our meetings has also increased significantly, and we value its contribution to our work. The Security Council remains above all a decision-making body. We must never lose sight of that. In 2021, we adopted 24 presidential statements and 57 resolutions, most of them unanimously. Needless to say, there are important areas of disagreement among Council members. That was the case last year, and it clearly remains the case today. But our collective responsibility is to show a spirit of compromise and to scrupulously respect the letter and the spirit of the Charter. I hope that spirit of compromise will prevail, because the stakes in terms of peace and security are enormous.

I thank the representative of France for his statement and his team for their efforts in preparing the report. It is my understanding that the Council is ready to proceed to the adoption of the draft annual report. May I take it that the draft report is adopted by the Council? There being no objection, it is so decided. This decision will be reflected in a note by the President of the Security Council, to be issued as document S/2022/403.