India on Thursday criticised the functioning of the United Nations Security Council’s Sanctions Committee, which took over 10 years to blacklist Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar. India’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN Ambassador K Nagaraj Naidu said that the council has several subsidiary bodies that follow obscure practices that have no legal basis in the Charter or any of the Security Council’s resolutions.
Naidu was speaking at an open debate on the “Working Methods” of the council. “We have seen several such bodies being created and tasked with crucial responsibilities such as taking decisions on listing and delisting individuals and entities from the various sanctions regimes of the Council,” he said. “These committees undertake their work outside of the norms of transparency and there is hardly any effort to make the broader UN membership or the international community aware of their various decisions.”
The Indian representative said that member states are informed when the requests for listing of individuals and entities are approved by the subsidiary committees, however, when these requests are denied, he said that the rejections are neither made public or conveyed to the larger membership.
“Further, just like the efforts of member states to designate terrorist leaders go unnoticed by the membership, efforts of terrorist leaders trying to get themselves delisted are also going unnoticed,” he said.
On May 1, India was finally successful in getting the United Nations’ 1267 Al Qaeda Sanctions Committee to delist Azhar and designate him as a global terrorist. The Jaish-e-Mohammed killed 40 Central Reserve Police Force Personnel in a suicide attack on security forces in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pulwama district on February 14.
The delisting was possible after China lifted its veto, but it had repeatedly blocked attempts by the United Nations Security Council to blacklist Azhar in the past.
On Friday, Naidu also said that the communication between the United Nations General Assembly that represents all the 193 members, and the Council that is comprised of its permanent members, must be restored and strengthened, according to IANS.
He further said that the reports of the Council to the Assembly only record the number of times the Council conducted meetings and the debates that were held instead of being “more substantive and analytical”.
“Moreover, the manner in which these reports are tabled causes delays in how and when these reports are discussed in the General Assembly thereby the membership losing an important opportunity of engagement with the Council,” IANS quoted Naidu as saying.
The Indian representative also called for increased participation of the countries that contribute soldiers in peace-keeping operations, mandated by the Council, and for implementing their suggestions.
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