S/PV.9812 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/2024/906, 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.

The draft resolution received 15 votes in favour. The draft resolution has been adopted unanimously as resolution 2763 (2024). I shall now make a statement in my capacity as the representative of the United States of America. The United States welcomes today’s renewal of the mandate of the Monitoring Team under resolution 1988 (2011) for another 14 months and the reaffirmation of the regime’s assets freeze, travel ban and targeted arms embargo. With today’s adoption, the Security Council has affirmed the continuing importance of the resolution 1988 (2011) sanctions regime to supporting peace and stability in Afghanistan. The Monitoring Team’s reporting remains essential to the Council’s work. It facilitates our understanding of events on the ground and enables the Council to assess the Taliban’s actions, including those involving counter-terrorism, human rights  — particularly for women and girls  — and the conditions for impartial humanitarian access and the independent provision of assistance. The Monitoring Team’s work is particularly salient now, given the Taliban’s increasing restrictions on the rights of women, girls and persons belonging to minority groups, which negatively affect peace and stability in Afghanistan. We remain deeply concerned about the Taliban’s recent decision to suspend women’s and girls’ access to medical education and about the Taliban’s August 2024 so-called vice and virtue directive to further deprive women and girls of their fundamental rights, including their chance to learn, live and thrive with freedom and dignity. The United States joins the rest of the Council in expressing our deep alarm regarding those developments, as reflected in the resolution just adopted. In conclusion, I wish to thank the members of the Council for their constructive engagement on this resolution. I resume my functions as President of the Council. I shall now give the floor to those members of the Council who wish to make statements after the voting.

The Russian Federation today voted in favour of the resolution (resolution 2763 (2024)), which extended the mandate of the Monitoring Team on the sanctions regime against the Taliban under resolution 1988 (2011) for 14 months. We have been consistently supporting its activity and think that the reports coming from the Team are a great help to the Security Council Committee established pursuant to resolution 1988 (2011) on sanctions against the Taliban movement. We have from the beginning adopted a constructive approach to the process of negotiating the draft resolution. We focused on the practicability of what was proposed by the United States penholders on this dossier, namely, a swift operational technical rollover, which would allow the experts to smoothly continue implementing their functions. And as a continuation of our consistent line on having a practical interaction between the international community and the de facto authorities in Afghanistan, we would like to underscore the importance of the Monitoring Team’s visits to Afghanistan, as established by the resolution. The visits by the Team to the country remain one of the main preconditions to ensure that the mandate is effectively implemented. Another imperative for us is the reference in the resolution to the need to review the sanctions regime under resolution 1988 (2011) on the basis of recommendations prepared by the Monitoring Team as a result of their contacts with Member States. We are pleased that the text also contains provisions on the terrorist activity by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant and other groups, on the terrorist attacks that they carry out and on the need to enhance measures so as to eradicate that threat. Ultimately, stability in the region and beyond hinges on peace and stability in Afghanistan. At the same time, we note that there was an attempt to dilute the focus of the resolution by shifting it from the issues of fighting terrorism and related issues, manufacturing and trafficking drugs, onto the situation with the human rights in this country. That approach is in complete contradiction with the reasons that the sanctions against the Taliban were introduced. It is our view that the issues having to do with the domestic political situation in Afghanistan are something that the Security Council discusses yearly when we discuss the mandate of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan.

China welcomes the Council’s unanimous adoption of resolution 2763 (2024), renewing the mandate of the Monitoring Team supporting the Security Council Committee established pursuant to resolution 1988 (2011) for 14 months. We hope that the Team will continue to perform its duties actively in accordance with the mandate of the resolution and provide strong support for the work of the Committee. We support the Monitoring Team in strengthening its engagement with the Afghan interim Administration and look forward to an early visit by the Team to Afghanistan. I will make four points. First, the resolution reaffirms that Afghan territory cannot be used to support terrorism or threaten the security of other countries. China urges the Afghan authorities to implement the requirements of the resolution and step up their counter-terrorism efforts to resolutely combat all terrorist forces, including the Islamic State, Al-Qaida and the East Turkestan Islamic Movement. Secondly, the resolution reaffirms the need to help Afghanistan to meet its economic and humanitarian challenges, to restore its banking and financial system and to utilize the assets of the Afghan Central Bank for the benefit of the Afghan people. China urges the countries concerned to immediately and unconditionally unfreeze and return in full Afghanistan’s overseas assets, to stop imposing illegal unilateral sanctions against Afghanistan and to support Afghanistan’s efforts to improve its people’s livelihood. Thirdly, the resolution reaffirms support for inclusive governance in Afghanistan and calls for the protection of the fundamental rights of Afghan women and ethnic minorities. China urges the Afghan authorities to effectively implement the requirements of Security Council resolutions and wishes to point out that the resolution 1988 (2011) sanctions regime is a coercive measure to combat terrorism, not an appropriate platform for addressing human rights issues. Fourthly, the resolution reaffirms the need to review the resolution 1988 (2011) sanctions regime and emphasizes that Council sanctions should contribute to the promotion of peace and stability in Afghanistan. More than three years since the Taliban took over, the situation in Afghanistan has remained generally stable, with contacts between the outside world and the Afghan authorities gradually expanding. China reiterates its call for timely adjustments to the sanctions regime in the light of the evolving situation. As a first step, the Security Council should expeditiously reinstate the package of exemptions to the travel ban on the relevant personnel of the Afghan interim Administration, so as to create conditions conducive to and facilitate enhanced contacts between the international community and Afghanistan.