UNSC Watch: In COVID Era, Security Council Grapples With After-Effects of Absence of Formal Meetings

New Delhi: Over the last 75 years, the UN Security Council has developed an arcane alphabet soup of various formats of meetings and procedures – a by-product of the byzantine politics at the high table, which primarily ensures that only permanent members have the to operate the system.

But, the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent virtual nature of the UNSC’s meetings have further complicated the ability of nations’ to navigate its convoluted processes.

Last week, the humanitarian crisis in Ethiopia’s Tigray region was discussed in a closed-door Informal Interactive Dialogue (IID) – the latest iteration of US-led efforts to bring this to the council’s agenda despite opposition from fellow permanent members, Russia, China and the three elected African nations. So far, the conflict in Tigray, fierce fighting between government troops and rebels, has not been discussed in a formal setting.

Myanmar reappeared on the UNSC’s schedule after an absence of one and half months, during which time the council had handed over the rein to the regional group ASEAN. But, it was held in a private format, defined as a meeting held behind closed doors.

In contrast, the UN general assembly passed a non-binding resolution on the same day (June 18) that called on member states to impose an arms embargo against the Myanmar junta in response to the February 1 coup and the subsequent crackdown on pro-democracy protestors.

India was among the 36 nations that abstained in the voting, joining ranks with all other neighbours of Myanmar – Bangladesh, Thailand and China. Besides Maldives and Afghanistan, all other South Asian nations also stayed on the fence. Belarus was the only country voting against the resolution.

Among the south-east Asian nations, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam voted for the resolution, while Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Thailand and Laos abstained. This sharp division in the grouping is naturally slowing down ASEAN’s moves with Myanmar, which has yet to appoint a special envoy as agreed in the five-point consensus.

Also read: IT Rules Flout Intl Human Rights Norms, Says UN Experts; ‘Misplaced Concern,’ Says India

Earlier this month, Brunei’s second foreign minister and ASEAN secretary-general visited Myanmar, where they met with the Junta, but none of the deposed lawmakers.

The comments made by the UNSC president, Estonia’s Sven Jürgenson, acknowledged that there was a bit of frustration over ASEAN’s unhurried pace. “We welcome the ASEAN visit to Myanmar in June. However, the implementation process has remained slow on the 5-Point Consensus. We encourage ASEAN to make additional efforts to further accelerate the process,” he told reporters last Friday.

However, the council is highly unlikely to take back the initiative from ASEAN, despite the UNGA resolution, with members having serious differences in their approach to the situation.

Formal or informal?

The council’s approach to international peace and security issues has a significant bearing because its resolutions, unlike that of UNGA, are binding on the international community.

At the annual open debate of the council to discuss working methods, Loraine Sievers, author of the Procedure of the UN Security Council, pointed out that when the body was forced to halt physical meetings in mid-March 2020, it had to still renew the mandates of two UN missions that were running out at the end of the month.

The debate was held just a week after the UN General Assembly members had criticised the council during the discussion on the UNSC annual report.

With in-person voting on resolutions ruled out, a written procedure was adopted, as UNSC resolutions with their binding nature had to withstand legal scrutiny, reminded Sievers. “That procedure has perhaps been unduly time-consuming and convoluted and could benefit from further refinement. But what is most important is that it met the necessary requirements of legality and verifiability,” she said.

Karin Landgren, Executive Director of Security Council Report, pointed out that due to the written procedure, “accompanying oral explanations of vote, a boon to Council transparency, have been eliminated”.

Also read: UNSC Watch: UN General Assembly Collectively Delivers Its Annual Scolding to Council

According to its official records, UN Security Council has not held any ‘meetings’ for seven out of the last 15 months since new working methods had to be adopted due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

This is despite the slew of video conferences every day, which includes open debates, closed consultations and various types of briefings. The reason is because, when the new rules were drafted in March 2020, these video conferences were deemed as ‘informal’.

Landgren added that this decision to designate the Video Tele Conference (VTC) as informal had an “unintended” impact on the council’s functionality.

“Closed consultations, intended to permit frank discussion and to avoid prepared statements, appear, in general, to have taken on heightened formality, and the use of press elements to keep the public informed, which had a strong start in March 2020, appears to have dwindled,” she said.

Both UK and the US asserted that the lack of ‘formality’ to the video conferences has created roadblocks in the council’s responsiveness to emerging issues.

“Due to objections from a single Council member, the Council has not held formal meetings via video-teleconference since last March. That has meant that, without the procedural mechanisms for the resolution of disagreements, we have at times not been able to discuss new or existing agenda items more substantively or to bring visibility and attention to issues in the open when needed,” said UK envoy to the UN, Barbara Woodward.

Procedural votes can’t be taken in the VTCs because the council’s provisional rules of procedure apply only to formal meetings.

“Thus, due to the objections of one Council member as the pandemic began, for well over a year the Security Council has not been regularly functioning pursuant to its provisional rules of procedure and has not been holding “meetings”,” stated US’s deputy permanent representative to UN, Jeffrey DeLaurentis.

He pointed out that the UNGA was able to agree to enable electronic voting on resolutions in case in-person meetings are not held.

Also read: India Abstains from Voting on UNGA Resolution on Myanmar, Says Its Views Not Reflected in Draft

Stating that the current state of affairs was “unacceptable”, he suggested that security council should “adopt a procedural decision establishing that virtual meetings are indeed meetings of the Security Council, and that the Council’s provisional rules of procedure apply to them”. For procedural matters, permanent members cannot use their veto with at least nine affirmative votes required to adopt any decisions. However, during the cold war era, there was no agreement on whether a matter was procedural or substantive – and establishing that required a preliminary vote during which veto power was deployed.

Russia’s combative deputy envoy Dmitry Polyanskiy defended his country’s position that the video meetings, which he described as temporary in nature held under extraordinary circumstances, do not need a formal cover. “In the event of a recurrence of a crisis similar to that of last year, we have experience and a solution, which is set out in the letters of the President of the Security Council, to which we can always return to”.

Russia’s view, however, seems to be an isolated one in the security council. The ten elected non-permanent members, which includes India, also called for formalising the video conferences.

Speaking on behalf of the ‘E-10’, Kenya’s Kimani stated that the UNSC should agree that VTC meetings “are considered formal meetings of the Council, where the same provisional rules of procedure apply, allowing for the participation of non-members, the possibility to vote in real-time on procedural and substantive matters, provide fully for multilingualism and ensure the attendant record-keeping rather than developing temporary special measures again”.

The council held some in-person meetings from July to December 2020, but they were few and far between. From May this year, the council has slowly returned to its chambers, with most of the meetings in June held in person.

Besides, Russia also expressed its grouse that draft resolutions were circulated with very little notice as part of “tactical tricks” by western member states.

France’s permanent representative, Nicolas de Rivière, cautioned that “excess of public meetings” could also impact decision-making. “We spend too much time successively presenting our national positions and too little time working on compromises and joint actions. Public meetings are important, but they tend to polarise positions. We need to find a better balance. We are still quite far from that,” he said.

Also read: Ajit Doval, Pakistan’s Moeed Yusuf to Attend SCO Meet of NSAs in Tajikistan This Week

This week in UNSC

There are briefings on UN missions in South Sudan, Central African Republic, Palestine and Syria on the council’s timetable for this week.

On Tuesday, Estonia’s foreign minister Eva-Maria Liimets will chair a virtual meeting on Afghanistan. The UN’s special envoy for Afghanistan, Deborah Lyon, and UN Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Ghada Fathi Waly, are expected to brief the members.