S/PV.9437 Security Council

In accordance with rule 37 of the Council’s provisional rules of procedure, I invite the representative of the Democratic Republic of the Congo to participate in this meeting. The Security Council will now begin its consideration of the item on its agenda. The Council has before it the text of a statement by the President on behalf of the Council on the subject of today’s meeting. I thank Council members for their valuable contributions to the statement. In accordance with the understanding reached among the members of the Council, I shall take it that the members of the Security Council agree to the statement, which will be issued as a document of the Security Council under the symbol S/PRST/2023/5. I now give the floor to the representative of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

As this is the very first time that I address the Security Council, I would like to thank all Council members for giving us the opportunity to address this United Nations organ. The Council will recall that His Excellency Mr. Félix Antoine Tshisekedi Tshilombo, President of the Democratic Republic of Congo, took the rostrum to address the General Assembly at its recently commenced seventy-eighth session. On that occasion, he presented to Member States the vision of the Democratic Republic of Congo with regard to the process whereby the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO) is to withdraw from the country. That vision was reaffirmed before the Council by His Excellency Mr. Christophe Lutundula Apala Pen’apala, Minister for Foreign Affairs and Francophonie, who clearly explained it to the Council (see S/PV.9427). I am here today, first of all, to congratulate all the members of the Security Council for having embarked upon difficult and laborious negotiations that fortunately resulted in the compromise text of the presidential statement that the Council just agreed. On behalf of the President of the Republic and the Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, I would like to thank the Council for the exercise it has undertaken and to point out that the text lays the foundations for MONUSCO’s withdrawal from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in accordance with the wishes expressed by the Government and by the Head of State. We are very grateful to the Council for that, and we would like once again to thank all Council members for their hard work to produce the text, which is the basic text that will determine the decision to be taken by the Council in December. As the Council is aware, the Congolese people are eagerly awaiting that text, which will help to ease tensions between the local population and MONUSCO and to prevent the kind of damage we saw in August. We are very grateful, and we extend to the Council our sincerest thanks.