Sudan Sanctions: Vote on a Draft Resolution*
On Monday morning (17 February), the Security Council is expected to vote on a draft resolution extending the mandate of the Panel of Experts (PoE) assisting the 1591 Sudan Sanctions Committee for another year, until 12 March 2026. The US, the penholder on Sudan sanctions, drafted the text.
Background
The Security Council most recently renewed the mandate of the PoE assisting the 1591 Sudan Sanctions Committee through resolution 2725 of 8 March 2024, which extended the Panel until 12 March 2025. The resolution was adopted with 13 votes in favour and two abstentions (China and Russia). The duration of the mandate was apparently the most difficult aspect of those negotiations. (For background, see our 8 March 2024 What’s In Blue story.)
On 23 December 2024, Council members received the final report of the PoE, which had not yet been published at the time of writing. This is due to the delay in the appointment of subsidiary body chairs, which has prevented the 1591 Sudan Sanctions Committee from discussing the final report’s findings and recommendations. As a matter of practice, final reports are published only after being discussed in a Committee meeting.
The Panel’s final report apparently provides an account of various aspects of the conflict in Sudan, including its dynamics, the financing of armed groups, the humanitarian impact and violations of international humanitarian law, recruitment patterns of the warring parties, the proliferation of weapons and violations of the sanctions regime, and the conflict’s impact on regional security and stability, among other issues.
Negotiations on the Draft Resolution
The draft resolution in blue extends the mandate of the PoE assisting the 1591 Sudan Sanctions Committee until 12 March 2026. It requests the Panel to submit to the Committee an interim report on its activities by 12 August 2025 and a final report outlining its findings and recommendations by 13 January 2026. During the negotiations, it seems that the “A3 plus” grouping (Algeria, Sierra Leone, Somalia, and Guyana) sought to remove most of the preambular and operative paragraphs in the draft resolution, in line with a request from Sudan to keep the text short and concise. While the penholder had apparently wanted to retain the previous year’s text with only a few technical edits, it accepted the request by the “A3 plus” members to achieve compromise.
Similarly to last year, the most contentious part of the negotiations on the draft resolution was the duration of the mandate. The US circulated an initial draft of the text to Council members during the first week of February, proposing a 12-month technical rollover of the Panel’s mandate. The penholder convened one round of negotiations on 4 February, after which a revised draft of the text was placed under silence procedure until 6 February. However, the “A3 plus” members broke silence on this draft over the duration of the Panel’s mandate. This group of members, together with China, Russia, and Pakistan, supported a request by Sudan to extend the Panel’s mandate for six months in order to align its mandate with the renewal of the 1591 Sudan sanctions regime, which occurs in September. It seems that the penholder nevertheless pushed for a 12-month extension, which was apparently supported by some other Council members. (The term “technical rollover” is commonly used by diplomats to describe a concise resolution extending a peace operation’s mandate without altering its core mandate or tasks. It traditionally denotes an extension for a shorter period than is customary, but members increasingly use the term to describe routine mandate extensions where the content is unchanged.)
Given the divergence of views on the matter, the penholder eventually suggested an 18-month extension to address the concerns of those members that sought to align the Panel’s mandate with the renewal of the 1591 sanctions regime, but China and Russia apparently rejected this proposal, insisting on a six-month extension. This duration was still not acceptable to the US, however, which apparently considered it a red line during the negotiations.
It appears that the UN Secretariat also believed that a six-month extension might not be sufficient, given the time required to hire members of the PoE and secure visas for them to travel to Sudan. There have been past instances of denials or delays in granting visas by the Sudanese government. Additionally, the experts need adequate time to fulfil their mandate and submit a comprehensive report to the sanctions committee.
It seems that negotiations continued via email exchanges, with the US continuing to insist on extending the mandate for either 12 or 18 months. Of those two options, it seems that Sudan preferred the former. Therefore, it appears that the “A3 plus” members have agreed to the text based on this understanding. The penholder then placed the text directly into blue on 13 February, to be voted on Monday. It seems, however, that China and Russia may still abstain from the vote, as they did last year.
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**Post-script: On 17 February, the Security Council adopted resolution 2772, extending the mandate of the Panel of Experts (PoE) assisting the 1591 Sudan Sanctions Committee until 12 March 2026. The resolution received 13 votes in favour and two abstentions (China and Russia). In their explanations of vote, China and Russia argued that the mandate cycle of the POE should have been aligned with that of the 1591 sanctions regime, which expires on 12 September (S/PV.9860).
