Security Council Working Methods
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The Council will hold an open debate to discuss Council working methods on 27 August. The debate is expected to provide an opportunity to discuss implementation of its most recent decisions on working methods. (Most of these are set out in a Council presidential note S/2006/507 of July 2006.)
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For more than a decade, the working methods of the Security Council have been the topic of much discussion within and outside the Council. This reflects concerns about a number of aspects of Council practice and procedure. Essentially most of these concerns are related to four key areas: Transparency; Participation; Accountability; Efficiency. This Special Research Report looks back over the period from 1993 to the present and describes many of the efforts made to address these key issues. It is not an exhaustive history. The focus is more on issues and reforms to Council working methods which have ongoing relevance.
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On 16 October 2007 the General Assembly will hold elections for five non-permanent seats on the Security Council.
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In October the General Assembly will hold elections for five seats on the Security Council to replace Congo, Ghana, Peru, Qatar and Slovakia. Please see our 2006 Special Research Report (14 August 2006) for a detailed description of Council election procedures and processes.
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Given a challenging new mandate by the Council in December 2005 "to develop general recommendations on how to improve the effectiveness of United Nations sanctions", the Informal Working Group on General Issues of Sanctions, under the leadership of Greece, is expected to present its recommendations to the Council by the end of November.
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On 16 October, the General Assembly will hold elections for five non-permanent seats on the Security Council.
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In the July 2006 Forecast we outlined the criteria established by the Security Council's Ad Hoc Committee in its review of Security Council mandates. At the end of June, consensus had been reached to recommend that the Secretary-General phase out the vacant position of Special Envoy for Ethiopia and Eritrea.
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Following several months of work by the Council's Informal Working Group on Documentation and Other Procedural Matters, led by the Japanese Ambassador Kenzo Oshima, the Security Council approved today a Note by the President summing up various aspects of Council's practices and procedures.
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The Security Council's Ad-Hoc Committee on Mandate Review in June agreed on five clusters of mandates to be reviewed in phase one of its work.
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As reported in our May 2006 Monthly Forecast, the Council was expected to begin to consider ways in which it would examine its mandates pursuant to the Secretary-General's report on mandates review. The Council has now established a new mechanism to undertake this review, the Ad Hoc Council Mechanism on Mandate Review.
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As noted in discussions of Council subsidiary organs in prior issues of our Monthly Forecasts, the Secretariat is stretched in its capacity to service the sanctions committees and the expert teams assigned to a number of these committees. The indications from the Secretary-General's report seem to be that these problems are equally pronounced when other mandates are considered.
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The lack of a settled, generic policy on both the implementation of targeted sanctions and the working methods of the sanctions committees is not surprising given the Council's traditional situation-specific approach to issues. But this approach has not precluded Council members in the past from establishing general principles to guide their approach to issues.
