SCR@20 Panel and Closing Remarks
NOVEMBER 2005-NOVEMBER 2025: 20 YEARS of SCR
Our November 2005 Monthly Forecast launched SCR twenty years ago. Since then, we have published 240 Monthly Forecasts and expanded our products to include daily reporting through What’s in Blue, in-depth research reports on key topics, capacity building for incoming members, briefings to key stakeholders and regular podcasts.
We started with two member states and two foundations; today, 21 member states—and two foundations—support our work. We would like to thank our funders, particularly those who have consistently supported us over the years. In these difficult financial times, we are aware that shifts in funding priorities can leave organisations like SCR at risk of reduced operations and impact. We urge all who have benefited from our work to help us ensure that we can continue to provide timely, dependable, and actionable information and analysis. SCR from the beginning was committed to making the Security Council more transparent, accountable, and effective. We have done this through providing independent, impartial, evidence-based reporting of the Security Council’s work. Today, because of SCR, there is a better understanding of the inner workings of the Security Council.
We are proud to have contributed our part to promoting transparency and accessibility to the Council’s activities through coverage of meetings, negotiations, and Council visiting missions. Our in-depth reports provide analysis of key issues and options for action. SCR’s capacity building activities have helped elected members enter the Council better prepared to be effective members. Over the years, SCR has built up a body of work—available for free on our website—that provides a historical perspective of developments in the Council over the last two decades. We thank the many member states over the years that have shared information with us and trusted us to use the information in a fair manner. We could not do the work we do without you. Similarly, we are grateful for our collaboration with UN officials, staff in other multilateral bodies, and our colleagues in civil society, whose many insights have enriched our analysis.
It is more difficult to assert that our goal of providing better information to make the Council perform better has been achieved. At a recent panel discussion commemorating SCR’s 20 years, our founding Executive Director, Colin Keating, acknowledged this shortcoming but also noted that “If SCR were to disappear, the one thing you could be sure of is that over time the Council’s performance would deteriorate even more.”
At a time when the multilateral system—with the UN at its core—adapts to difficult realities, SCR’s fact-based approach to covering the work of the Security Council is needed more than ever. As we move rapidly into a world where the line between fact and disinformation becomes increasingly blurred, all of us in SCR are committed to providing our readers with independent, reliable factual reporting of key developments in international peace and security.
Shamala Kandiah Thompson
Executive Director
