UN-LAS Cooperation
Expected Council Action
In April, the Security Council is expected to hold a high-level briefing on cooperation between the UN and the League of Arab States (LAS). Bahrain’s Foreign Minister Abdullatif bin Rashid Al Zayani is expected to chair the meeting. UN Assistant Secretary-General for the Middle East, Asia and the Pacific in the Departments of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs and Peace Operations (DPPA-DPO) Mohamed Khaled Khiari and Secretary-General of the League of Arab States Ahmed Aboul Gheit are the anticipated briefers.
At the time of writing, Council members have been negotiating a draft presidential statement as a possible outcome of the meeting.
Background and Key Recent Developments
In recent years, Arab Council members have adopted the practice of holding meetings on UN-LAS cooperation during their Council presidencies. This has included Algeria (2024-2025), the United Arab Emirates (2022-2023), Tunisia (2020-2021), and Kuwait (2018-2019). The Council has also adopted presidential statements in connection with some of these meetings, including S/PRST/2019/5, S/PRST/2021/2, and S/PRST/2022/1, adopted in 2019, 2021, and 2022, respectively.
The presidential statements, which were adopted after the meetings in 2021 and 2022, encouraged Council members to hold an informal meeting with the LAS Secretary-General and Arab Summit Troika representatives on the margins of the General Assembly’s high-level segment. Since then, each year the meeting has taken place in the format of a high-level informal interactive dialogue.
On 23 January 2025, the Council held its most recent briefing on UN-LAS cooperation under then-Council member Algeria’s presidency. In his briefing to the Council, Khiari framed the meeting against the backdrop of an acute regional crisis, noting that the extreme challenges facing the Middle East were coinciding with wider strains on the international system and the rules-based order. His briefing focused on three main areas: the short-lived Gaza ceasefire and hostage deal brokered days earlier; the importance of UN-LAS cooperation on the transitions underway in Syria and Lebanon; and the deteriorating situation in Sudan, where he called for intensified diplomatic efforts. He also highlighted youth engagement as a shared priority, referencing the Arab Regional Youth, Peace and Security (YPS) Strategy. Gheit also briefed the Council and similarly focused on Gaza, stressing that only the realisation of Palestinian statehood could guarantee lasting peace, while also flagging the League’s hope for a successful and inclusive Syrian transition free of foreign interference.
On 17 May 2025, the LAS held its 34th summit in Baghdad—the first in Iraq since 2012. UN Secretary-General António Guterres attended the summit. The summit was dominated by the war in Gaza, with the resulting Baghdad Declaration calling for an immediate ceasefire and rejecting the forced displacement of Palestinians. Arab leaders called on countries and international financial institutions to provide financial support for an Arab-led Gaza reconstruction plan to counter the proposal being made by the US, at the time, to take control of the enclave. The declaration also condemned Israeli strikes on Syrian territory and called for continued engagement on Sudan and Libya.
Subsequently, on 17 November 2025—following months of US-led diplomatic activity—the Council adopted resolution 2803, which endorsed the Comprehensive Plan to End the Gaza Conflict and authorised the establishment of the Board of Peace (BoP) and a temporary International Stabilization Force (ISF). Thirteen members voted in favour, including then-Council member Algeria, who also represented the Arab voice on the Council, while China and Russia abstained. Several LAS states—including Egypt, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE)—publicly backed the US initiative.
Following the outbreak of conflict triggered by the Israeli-US strikes on Iran on 28 February, the LAS Secretary-General strongly condemned the Iranian retaliatory missile and drone attacks against Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, the UAE, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, characterising them as a flagrant violation of the sovereignty of states that had neither sought nor participated in the war. On 8 March, the LAS Council convened an extraordinary ministerial session and adopted a resolution condemning the strikes as a serious violation of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the affected states and endorsing the right to self-defence under Article 51 of the UN Charter. The resolution also condemned Iran’s targeting of civilian infrastructure and called on the Security Council to adopt a binding resolution demanding an immediate halt to the attacks.
The subsequent adoption of Council resolution 2817 on 11 March, which condemned Iran’s strikes on Arab states, was welcomed by Gheit, who also congratulated Bahrain—the author of the resolution—for mobilising support for the text. He described the “majority” of 13 votes in favour as a “broad international rejection” of the Iranian attacks and as underscoring the solidarity with the Arab position. All LAS member states except for Iraq (and a total of 136 member states) co-sponsored the resolution. China and Russia abstained from voting on the resolution.
The LAS has also been active in supporting Lebanon in the face of continued Israeli military operations targeting Hezbollah on Lebanese territory. On 14 March, Gheit condemned Israeli strikes on civilian objects and assets belonging to the Lebanese state, while supporting the Lebanese government’s decision to ban Hezbollah’s military and security activities. On 18 March, the LAS’ Executive Bureau of the Council of Arab Health Ministers held an emergency meeting to discuss providing support to the health sector in Lebanon, as it struggles to meet the needs of persons displaced by the renewed Israeli attacks.
Key Issues and Options
The overarching issue is how the UN and the LAS can work together more effectively to promote peace and security across the Arab world at a moment of acute and interconnected regional crises.
Council members could discuss ways of doing this during the meeting. According to the concept note circulated by Bahrain to Council members to help guide the discussion, the aim of the meeting is to, among other things:
- evaluate cooperation and enhance coordination between the UN and the LAS in addressing emerging regional threats;
- develop joint strategies following disruptions to maritime security and global supply chains;
- explore collaboration to counter disinformation and hate speech; and
- identify opportunities for streamlining capacity-building efforts on counterterrorism, crisis preparedness and resilience building.
Another key issue is how the UN and the LAS can enhance cooperation on thematic priorities—including the women, peace and security (WPS) agenda, the Arab Regional YPS Strategy, and counterterrorism.
A possible option for strengthening the UN’s institutional relationship with the LAS includes conducting periodic Security Council visits to LAS headquarters in Cairo—the only such visit took place in 2016—by alternating meetings between New York and Cairo, in line with the annual meeting between the UN Security Council and the African Union (AU) Peace and Security Council.
Another option is for Council members to consider adopting a presidential statement in connection with the meeting, which would be the first statement on UN-LAS cooperation since 2022. The statement could reiterate the Council’s commitment to closer UN-LAS coordination on conflict prevention, early warning, peacebuilding, and addressing transnational threats such as terrorism, among other issues. It could also emphasise the role of the UN Liaison Office to the LAS in Cairo as a facilitator of strengthened institutional cooperation on these issues.
Council Dynamics
Council members broadly recognise the importance of strengthening relations between the UN and the LAS, particularly given the deteriorating security environment across the Arab world. This consensus has, in the past, enabled the adoption of presidential statements in connection with the annual briefings and the holding of high-level informal dialogues between the Council and the Arab Summit Troika.
At the same time, in the Council’s most recent UN-LAS cooperation meeting on 23 January 2025, Gheit directly pointed to a structural obstacle to more effective cooperation: the strategic rivalry between major powers has driven up tensions within the Council and “adversely affected the handling of Arab issues, especially the question of Palestine”. The meeting also produced no presidential statement, despite ongoing negotiations on a draft submitted by then-Council member Algeria.
In the year since, two significant developments have coloured the context for UN-LAS cooperation and heightened both the urgency and the difficulty of effective coordination between the two bodies.
The first is the adoption of US-authored resolution 2803, which endorsed the US plan to end the Gaza conflict and set up the BoP and ISF. China and Russia abstained, with the latter noting the text’s absence of a meaningful path to Palestinian statehood. The backing of the plan by several LAS states reflects a strategic investment in pursuing the ceasefire and the reconstruction process. Bahrain, the current Arab member on the Council, has since become a member of the BoP, and in its inaugural meeting on 19 February, it pledged funding for Gaza relief and reconstruction efforts. At the same time, Gheit was clear following the resolution’s adoption that it must ultimately lead to the realisation of a Palestinian state, noting that Israel’s continued occupation of Palestinian territory remains the “core of the problem”.
The second, more recent development is the outbreak of the US-Israeli conflict with Iran. In a 28 February Council meeting on the issue, Maged Abdelfattah Abdelaziz, the Permanent Observer for the LAS to the UN, described the moment as one in which “the Arab-Israeli conflict has expanded into full-scale regional war”. The LAS position on the issue is notably bifurcated between longstanding rejection of unilateral military action in the region—including against Iran—and a strong condemnation of Iran’s retaliatory attacks on Arab states, which is seen by the LAS as a “strategic miscalculation” that is creating a rift between the neighbouring sides. Several LAS members are either benefactors of or broadly align with the US-led security architecture in the Gulf region. However, many are also apprehensive of Israel’s increased regional influence, which was highlighted following Israel’s strikes in Qatar on 9 September 2025.
The Council’s response to the conflict has been fractured. Following their abstentions during the adoption of resolution 2817, which condemned Iran’s strikes on neighbouring states, Russia argued that the resolution failed to reflect the full context of the conflict, while China cautioned that the text did not address the root causes. In the same meeting, the council voted on a competing draft resolution on the crises, presented by Russia, which failed to be adopted due to insufficient support: It received four votes in favour (China, Russia, Pakistan, and Somalia), two votes against (Latvia and the US), and nine abstentions.
Sudan is another fault line with internal divisions among LAS member states—which back different parties to the conflict—that mirrors and compounds the Council’s paralysis on the file. Despite the catastrophic humanitarian situation in Sudan, the Council has been unable to adopt any formal outcome, beyond renewing the Panel of Experts of the 1591 Sanctions Committee, since 2024. Divisions on Sudan in both bodies have made meaningful UN-LAS cooperation on the file difficult.
| Security Council Presidential Statement | |
| 23 March 2022S/PRST/2022/1 | This presidential statement welcomed the cooperation between the UN and the League of Arab States and reiterated the Council’s intention to consider further steps to promote closer cooperation and strategic coordination between the two Organisations. |
| Security Council Meeting Record | |
| 23 January 2025S/PV.9845 | This was a Security Council meeting on cooperation between the UN and the League of Arab States. |
