Sanctions: Vote on a Draft Resolution on the Focal Point for Delisting and Informal Working Group on UN Sanctions*
On Friday afternoon (19 July), the Security Council is expected to vote on a draft resolution co-penned by Malta and the US strengthening the mandate of the Focal Point for Delisting, which was established by resolution 1730 of 19 December 2006 to receive requests for delisting from UN sanctions regimes. The draft text also establishes an Informal Working Group (IWG) of the Security Council on General UN Sanctions Issues, a previous iteration of which was active between 2000 and 2006. The draft resolution is open for co-sponsorship by the wider UN membership.
Background
As the number of UN sanctions regimes expanded in the 1990s following the end of the Cold War, concerns emerged about the lack of consistency, transparency, and redress mechanisms in the regimes’ listing and delisting procedures, which threatened the due process rights of designated entities and individuals. In April 2000, a note issued by the president of the Security Council established, on a temporary basis, the IWG on General Issues of Sanctions, which was mandated to develop recommendations on how to improve the effectiveness of UN sanctions, including on “the conditions for the maintaining/lifting of sanctions”. The IWG was requested to deliver its recommendations within six months, but due to persistent disagreement between members on a variety of issues, the group’s mandate was periodically extended for several years to allow for further deliberations.
With negotiations in the IWG stalled, a parallel discussion began in what was then known as the 1267 Al-Qaida and Taliban Sanctions Committee—now the 1267/1989/2253 Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL/Da’esh) and Al-Qaida Sanctions Committee—about the specific issue of due process and measures to improve delisting procedures. Those discussions culminated in the adoption of resolution 1730 in December 2006, which established the Focal Point for Delisting as a crosscutting mechanism within the UN Secretariat to receive delisting requests from designated individuals and to facilitate consultations on such requests between the Council and relevant member states. That same month, having achieved consensus, the IWG submitted its final report with general recommendations on how to improve the effectiveness of UN sanctions, after which the group was discontinued.
Since the Focal Point for Delisting was mandated to serve only as a coordination mechanism to process delisting requests and was not granted independent review or advisory authority, it did not fully assuage due process concerns for listed individuals—particularly those designated by the 1267/1989/2253 sanctions regime, which was and remains the largest UN sanctions regime and whose designations had been challenged in some national courts. Consequently, on 17 December 2009, the Council adopted resolution 1904, establishing an Office of the Ombudsperson to receive and recommend action on requests for delisting from the 1267/1989/2253 regime. Committee members can only overturn the Ombudsperson’s recommendation by consensus, which has never happened to date.
Since the establishment of the Ombudsperson, several member states—such as those comprising the Group of Like-Minded States on UN Targeted Sanctions, which includes current Council member Switzerland and incoming member Denmark—as well as civil society organisations and independent experts have continued to express concerns about due process in other UN sanctions regimes. One recurring proposal has been to expand the Ombudsperson to cover all regimes, but this has faced opposition from some permanent Council members. In a recent example of compromise on the issue, resolution 2700 of 19 October 2023, which renewed the 2653 sanctions regime on Haiti, recognised the “need to continuously strengthen due process” and expressed the Council’s intention to “support the further development of fair and clear procedures” for delisting designated individuals and entities, “including through the Focal Point for Delisting”. Most recently, the Council reiterated this intention in resolution 2713 of 1 December 2023, which renewed the sanctions regime on Al-Shabaab.
Draft Resolution
The negotiations on the draft resolution were long but apparently not contentious. Malta and the US circulated an initial draft of the text to Council members on 11 April, amending the Focal Point’s original delisting procedures as annexed to resolution 1730. Based on Council members’ comments, the co-penholders circulated a revised draft on 1 May, which included a new provision proposed by China to establish an IWG on UN sanctions. (China previously called for reviving the group at a 7 February 2022 debate convened by Russia on the unintended humanitarian consequences of sanctions.) The co-penholders circulated a second revised draft on 10 June. On 3 July, the co-penholders placed a third revised draft under silence, initially until 5 July and subsequently until 8 July after requests for extension. Russia and Switzerland broke silence on that draft. Yesterday (16 July), the co-penholders placed a fourth revised draft directly in blue, without an additional silence procedure.
The first annex attached to the draft resolution in blue outlines new delisting procedures for the Focal Point mechanism. It gives the Focal Point a more proactive mandate to consult on delisting requests it has received with relevant member states and other entities to collect a wider range of information under a more clearly defined process and timeline. In the most substantive change to its mandate, the Focal Point shall then draft, submit, and present to the relevant sanctions committee a “comprehensive report” summarising the information, including the delisting request’s “principal arguments”. The annex emphasises that the summary is “distinct from a recommendation”, however, and that the Focal Point “will not make a recommendation on the petition”.
In another change, the annex stipulates that if any committee member or relevant member state recommends that the delisting proceed, after receiving the Focal Point’s report and presentation, the chair of the committee will submit the delisting request to the committee for a decision through its normal decision-making procedures. Under resolution 1730, a committee member or relevant state had to specifically recommend delisting for the sanctions committee to take action on the delisting request.
The draft resolution in blue also establishes an IWG of the Security Council on General UN Sanctions Issues, with a second annex outlining the group’s terms of reference. It will comprise all Council members, operate by consensus, and meet “at least” bi-annually in closed session to examine a range of issues, with a view to improving the effectiveness of UN sanctions regimes. The chair of the IWG will submit an annual report to the Council summarising the group’s activities and recommendations and convene an annual open briefing for interested member states. The draft resolution in blue also requests the Secretary-General to consult with the IWG on the appointment of a new Focal Point to take over the mandate of the original mechanism established by resolution 1730.
It seems that most Council members were generally supportive of the draft resolution, agreeing on the need to strengthen the Focal Point mechanism and on the usefulness of establishing a new IWG as a forum to discuss crosscutting sanctions issues. The Focal Point’s new delisting procedures were apparently the subject of some discussion, however. In breaking silence on the third revised draft, it seems that Switzerland requested changes to a requirement that a committee member or other relevant state had to recommend delisting for the committee chair to submit the delisting request to the committee for a decision—a procedure similar to the one outlined in resolution 1730, which Switzerland apparently argued set the threshold too high for taking action on the request. Consequently, the draft resolution blue stipulates that a committee member or relevant state must simply recommend that the delisting request proceed through the committee’s regular decision-making procedures, without taking a position on the outcome of the decision.
Another issue during the negotiations concerned the specific topics listed under the IWG’s mandate. The third revised draft that was put under silence apparently specified a range of sanctions-related issues for the group to discuss. In their respective silence breaks, it seems that Switzerland proposed adding due process to this list, while Russia argued that the list should be more general and less prescriptive to avoid prejudicing the work of the individual sanctions committees. In the draft resolution in blue, the IWG’s mandate is similar to that of the previous draft—including issues such as the Focal Point mechanism, coordination among sanctions committees, best practices for sanctions implementation, and the unintended humanitarian consequences of sanctions—but the list has been streamlined and certain issues have been removed, such as efforts to investigate and identify the sources and methods of sanctions violations. Due process is still not listed as a stand-alone topic for discussion.
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Post-script: On 19 July, the Security Council unanimously adopted resolution 2744, strengthening the mandate of the Focal Point for Delisting and establishing an Informal Working Group of the Security Council on General UN Sanctions Issues. The resolution was co-sponsored by 52 member states.
