“Resolution 2014 ” by Permanent Representative of Russian Federation to the United Nations Vitaly Churkin, published in "Rossiyskaya Gazeta" on 23 December 2014
In the UN Security Council, the outgoing year, like the previous one, was extremely busy. Just look at the statistics: since the start of the year, the Security Council held over 200 open meetings and over 150 private consultations, and approved almost six dozen resolutions (only three by unanimous vote), almost three dozen statements by the President of the UN Security Council, and upwards of 130 press statements.
At the same time, the Security Council failed to approve two draft resolutions: on the Crimean referendum (vetoed by Russia, with China abstaining) in March, and on referring Syria to the International Criminal Court (vetoed by Russia and China) in May. In June, the Western members of the Security Council blocked two Russian draft resolutions: on a ceasefire in Ukraine/in support of the OSCE Chairman-in-Office’s Road Map, and on the humanitarian situation in Eastern Ukraine. It also proved impossible to coordinate about two dozen presidential and press statements, mostly related to Syria and Ukraine.
In 2014, the Security Council’s activities were dominated by Ukraine and Syria, which kept members busy and added significantly to the already heated atmosphere in the Council.
The confrontation over Ukraine was so intense that it proved all but impossible to coordinate anything “on paper.” In March, as I said, we had to veto the US draft resolution on the Crimean referendum. The resolutions and press statements we put forward in support of a ceasefire, the OSCE Chairman’s Road Map, and later the Minsk accords, ran up against our Western colleagues’ firm refusal to take into account all aspects of the Ukraine crisis, the integrity of the Geneva and Minsk documents, and the logical sequence of steps they provided for.
The sole Security Council resolution on Ukraine was approved in July and urged a full, thorough and independent international investigation into the crash of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17. Given the lack of transparency and delays to the investigation, we asked the Security Council in September to have the UN play a bigger role in the investigation and possibly appoint a Special Representative of the Secretary-General. Relatives of the Dutch victims recently issued a similar request, which validates the Russian position.
There was more headway on Syria, however. The destruction of Syria’s chemical arsenal, begun last year, was completed in 2014. We regret that our appeal to other Security Council members to draw up a document on the danger of chemicals falling into the hands of terrorists operating in Iraq and Syria was blocked. The Security Council also focused on improving the humanitarian situation in the Syrian Arab Republic, resulting in the adoption of three important resolutions. We managed to place cross-border deliveries of humanitarian aid within an acceptable framework that respects Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. Jointly with the People’s Republic of China, we prevented the Syrian file from being referred to the International Criminal Court. In July, a statement of the President of the Security Council was approved in line with our initiative, underscoring the inadmissibility of oil trade with ISIS, Jabhat al-Nusra and other al-Qaeda-related terrorist groups in Iraq and Syria. We intend to continue working on this in the Security Council.
Under the Russian Presidency and at our initiative, the Security Council also approved its first separate statement on the problem of drugs from Afghanistan. This is one of our priorities. On 18 December, the General Assembly approved a resolution on combating the glorification of Nazism. Despite the complexity of the current situation, there was broad support for this document, with 133 states voting for and only 4 states (USA, Canada, Palau and, inexplicably, Ukraine) voting against, with 51 abstentions. The resolution had a total of 44 co-authors.
This is a long-standing initiative of ours and the tenth time we submitted the draft resolution, though each time with new elements added to it. Unfortunately, this topic has lost none of its urgency. Quite the contrary. This year, our resolution focuses on manifestations of neo-Nazism. It underscores the importance of steps to prevent the honouring of Nazi organisations, including Waffen-SS. And for the first time, it emphasises the inadmissibility of Holocaust denial.
The resolution makes special mention of the forthcoming celebration of the 70th anniversary of victory in WWII. We will soon start working on a separate resolution dedicated to this date, with a formal meeting of the General Assembly planned for May.
We also think it’s important that the General Assembly approved resolutions on the UN’s cooperation with the CSTO, the SCO, and the CIS – the first of its kind for the CIS.
In terms of international law, Russia’s application for a stretch of continental shelf in the Sea of Okhotsk was approved by the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf on 11 March 2014. Today, we have firm legal grounds for developing shelf resources on an area of 50,000 square kilometres. We are planning to submit an amended Russian application for shelf areas in the Arctic in the near future.
Elections to the International Court of Justice, the main judicial body of the UN, added the prominent Russian international lawyer Kirill Gevorgyan to the bench.
But problems remain. We are concerned that, despite repeated appeals by the Security Council, the International Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia is still unable to conclude its work. The Security Council established the Tribunal way back in 1993, and at that time, of course, no one could imagine that it would still exist today. There was no deadline imposed, which was a huge mistake in retrospect.
The overwhelming majority of cases were dismissed; no new charges have been brought for a long time, nor are they likely to be. All fugitives from justice have been delivered to The Hague. The so-called Residual Mechanism has been in operation since 2013, and has gradually assumed the Tribunal’s administrative and judicial functions. All that remains is for the Tribunal to expedite the outstanding cases, including Mladić, Karadžić and Šešelj, but it refuses. The latter was kept at The Hague as a suspect for over ten years, which is at odds with all standards of justice.
The resulting impression is that the Tribunal heads are deliberately drawing out the process. Judges spend a year and a half reading files and make mistakes when qualifying cases; there is a lot of organizational muddle. I regret to say that many of my colleagues on the Security Council turn a blind eye to these facts, invoking the independence of the judiciary. But this involves numerous costs, including financial. On 18 December, the Security Council approved a resolution extending the Tribunal judges’ mandate for one year in order for them to finalise, at long last, the remaining processes. This time, the Security Council, acting on our proposal, urged the Tribunal to concentrate and keep the proceedings as short as possible. We’ll see how they react to this appeal.
In the socioeconomic sphere, the year was dominated by preparations for a truly momentous September 2015 summit that is supposed to approve the Post-2015 Development Agenda, which will set the priorities for humanity’s progress towards sustainable development. A set of 17 sustainable development goals has been drafted for inclusion on the Agenda. Hopefully, in 2015, the UN will be able to focus less on crises and more on the incremental work to solve the fundamental challenges facing the world.
