UN Security Council revisit sanctions on terrorist individual, group

The Security Council, acting through its temporary silence procedure amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, adopted a resolution Tuesday encouraging Member States to engage more actively with its committee overseeing sanctions on individuals and groups related to Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL/Da’esh) and Al-Qaida.

Unanimously adopting resolution 2560 (2020), the 15-member Council encouraged States to more actively submit to the Committee listing requests of individuals, groups, undertakings and entities that meet criteria laid out in resolution 2368 (2017), so as to keep the ISIL/Da’esh and Al-Qaida Sanctions List reliable and up to date.

It also requested an analytical support and sanctions monitoring team to study the exemption procedures set out in resolution 2368 (2017) and make recommendations to the Committee within nine months on whether an exemptions update is required.

The representative of South Africa, Council President for December, spoke briefly in his national capacity after the adoption, thanking Council members for their unity and peacekeepers around the globe for their service in a tumultuous year.

The representative of Indonesia, one of the draft’s two co-facilitators, welcomed the Council’s constructive negotiations on such an important matter. “It is a very good ending to 2020,” he said.

[Security Council resolutions are currently adopted through a written procedure vote under temporary, extraordinary and provisional measures implemented in response to the COVID-9 pandemic, as set out in a letter (document S/2020/253) by its President for March (China).]