Research Reports

Longer in-depth analysis of particularly significant Council decisions, processes or practices.

  • 20 August 2015

    The Rule of Law

    This is SCR's third Cross-Cutting Report on the Rule of Law

  • This is Security Council Report’s seventh Cross-Cutting Report on Children and Armed Conflict, continuing a series that began in 2008.

  • This is Security Council Report’s seventh Cross-Cutting Report on the Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict, continuing a series that began with the publication of our first report on the subject in 2008. 

  • On 16 October, the General Assembly is expected to hold elections for five members of the Security Council. The new members will take up their seats on 1 January 2015 and will serve on the Council until 31 December 2016. 

  • These reports systematically track the Security Council’s work on women, peace and security, highlighting trends that have developed since the matter first emerged as a distinct thematic issue in 2000. The present report covers the period of January to December 2013 and analyses statistical information on women, peace and security in country-specific decisions of the Security Council.

  • This is Security Council Report’s third Special Research Report on the working methods of the Security Council, examining almost exactly four years of developments within the Security Council, its Informal Working Group on Documentation and Other Procedural Questions and its other subsidiary bodies and comparing them to earlier findings.

  • 21 February 2014

    Children and Armed Conflict

    This is Security Council Report’s sixth Cross-Cutting Report on Children and Armed Conflict, continuing a series that began with the publication of our first report on the subject in 2008. It covers relevant developments at the thematic level over the 2012-2013 period. It analyses Council action in country-specific situations, as well as the output of the Working Group on Children and Armed Conflict. It also examines two sanctions regimes—Côte d’Ivoire and the Democratic Republic of the Congo—to illustrate the impact of sanctions on children and armed conflict. 

  • This is Security Council Report’s sixth Cross-Cutting Report on the Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict, continuing a series that began with the publication of our first report on the subject in 2008. The present report covers relevant developments at the thematic level since our May 2012 Cross-Cutting Report and analyses Council action in country-specific situations relating to the protection of civilians, with a special focus on Sudan.

  • 25 November 2013

    UN Sanctions

    This Special Research Report provides an overview of UN sanctions with four main purposes: first, to provide a concise explanatory guide to the fundamentals of UN sanctions regimes; second, to offer a reference source of accessible data regarding UN sanctions regimes currently in force; third, to outline some significant trends in the evolution of UN sanctions; and fourth, to offer analysis of current Council dynamics and policy options regarding sanctions.

  • On 17 October, the General Assembly is expected to hold elections for five members of the Security Council. The new members will take up their seats on 1 January 2014 and will serve on the Council until 31 December 2015. 

  • This Special Research Report examines the work of the PBC—a relatively recent addition to the UN system—mainly in the country-specific contexts of its work: Sierra Leone, Burun­di, Liberia, Guinea-Bissau, Central African Republic and Guinea.

  • This is SCR's third Cross-Cutting Report on Women, Peace and Security, covering a thematic issue which has been on the agenda of the Security Council since 2000. This report analyses the country-specific decisions of the Security Council and developments in 2012, with a particular focus in the case study on the nexus between sexual violence in conflict and sanctions imposed by the Security Council.

  • This report focuses on Council practice regarding individual accountability for international crimes and human rights violations in the situations on its agenda. To do so, it first provides the legal context of the development of individual accountability under international law and tracks the historical background of pertinent Council practice. Against this background, the report explores eight case studies that illustrate how the Council has been dealing with issues of accountability in specific situations.

  • The General Assembly is scheduled to hold elections on 18 October to select five new members to the Security Council.  Security Council Elections 2012 provides an overview of the candidates running for a 2013-2014 seat on the Council, as well as helpful information on voting procedures and modern regional groupings and historical background on past elections.   An annex provides a comprehensive review of all previous elections to the Security Council from 1946-2011.  

  • Security Council Report’s fifth Cross-Cutting Report on Children and Armed Conflict analyses statistical information on children and armed conflict in country-specific decisions of the Security Council and trends in 2011 and early 2012. It also suggests options for improving Security Council and Working Group decision making on this issue.  After several years of largely positive developments and progress, in 2011 the protection of children in armed conflict agenda faced a number of challenges. Although it was possible for the Council in 2011 to adopt resolution 1998, expanding the criteria for inclusion in the Secretary-General’s annexes to include attacks on schools and hospitals, the repercussions of the differences that emerged during the negotiations are still being felt in 2012. While resolution 1973 on Libya set off a series of reactions that significantly affected Council dynamics in most areas of its work, our findings indicate that this did not affect the children and armed conflict agenda substantively although it may have led to a more cautious approach to the issue in order not to roll-back progress made in the past.