Chapter 9:   RELATIONS WITH OTHER ORGANS AND ENTITIES

Section 1(g)e:   General Assembly

 

Divergences over Annual Report paragraph on Western Sahara raise issues re no-objection procedures and effect of dissociation

 

Each year, the Security Council submits an Annual Report to the General Assembly pursuant to Articles 15(1) and 24(3) of the UN Charter. As most recently recorded in the comprehensive note on Security Council working methods, S/2024/507, responsibility for drafting the report is shared between Council members and the UN’s Security Council Affairs Division (SCAD).

 

Pursuant to paragraph 146 of S/2024/507, the Introduction is to be prepared by the Council presidency of July.[1] Under paragraph 149, this Introduction is to be “approved by all members of the Council who served on the Council during the reporting period.” Moreover, the Introduction “shall be completed no later than 31 January so as to allow the Secretariat enough time for translation.”

 

According to paragraph 150, the factual body of the report is to be prepared by SCAD and “shall be approved by all current members of the Council and the immediate past elected members who served on the Council during the reporting period covered.” The two parts of the report are then combined in a single document to be submitted by SCAD

 

“to the members of the Council no later than 15 March following the period covered by the report, so that it may be discussed and thereafter adopted by the Council no later than 30 May, in time for consideration by the General Assembly immediately thereafter.”

 

Since 1993, the adoption of the Annual Report has taken place at a formal public meeting of the Council, and this decision is subsequently published as a note by the Council President. S/2024/507 provides that at the adoption meeting, “members of the Council who wish to do so may comment on the work of the Council for the period covered by the report”. However, it has long been customary that the only speakers at the adoption meeting have been the Council President, making introductory remarks, and the delegation responsible for drafting the Introduction.

 

This was not the case, however, at the meeting convened by the Council presidency of Greece on 30 May 2025 to adopt the Annual Report for 2024.[2] Following remarks by the representative of the Russian Federation, which had drafted the report’s Introduction, the representative of Sierra Leone raised a point of order relating to the section in the Introduction on Western Sahara, which she characterized as “not factually accurate”. In essence, her argument was that despite the fact that the Introduction had passed through a no-objection procedure (NOP) in February 2025, the “imperative” of maintaining factual accuracy justified reopening the Introduction in order to correct it. Thereafter, the representatives of the Russian Federation, the United States, France, Algeria and China took the floor to respond.

 

The objection by Sierra Leone raised two distinct issues: The first was the substantive question as to whether the paragraph on Western Sahara was factually accurate. The second was the procedural question as to whether the contents of the Introduction could be re-examined after it had passed a no-objection procedure more than three months prior.  

 

The section in the Introduction on Western Sahara is comprised of three segments. The first simply states that the Council continued to hold biannual consultations and received briefings by the Secretary-General’s Special Representative and his Personal Envoy. The third segment describes the Council’s adoption of resolution 2756 (2024) extending the mandate of the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO) for one year. These two parts remained acceptable to all Council members, including Sierra Leone.

 

At issue was the second segment which stated that Council members had reaffirmed certain objectives. It was this segment that Sierra Leone wished to see deleted, on grounds that it “attributes to the Council a political characterization or assessment that was neither formally adopted nor expressed through any agreed position.” The Sierra Leone representative added that this segment which, she contended, reflected “the views of not more than two delegations”, risked “being misinterpreted as a consensus political assessment, an assessment the Council did not reach.” In the view of Sierra Leone, the Annual Report “must reflect the Council’s activities as they occurred and not as they are perceived through divergent political lenses.”

 

The Sierra Leone representative stated that her delegation’s concerns over the factual inaccuracy had been “acknowledged by a majority of Council members”. This could not be ascertained from statements made at the meeting itself, owing to the small number of other Council members who took the floor. However, during the meeting, the representative of the United States concurred with Sierra Leone’s conclusions and expressed support for its approach. The representative of France stated that her delegation associated itself with certain of the remarks made by Sierra Leone. She held that the issue of substance must be taken into consideration, in that it was a straightforward question of accuracy, and not be “rejected for reasons of procedure”.

 

In their interventions, the representatives of the Russian Federation, Algeria and China did not address claims that the Introduction section was factually inaccurate, thus appearing to hold the view that the essential and only issue was maintaining consistent practice with respect to the adoption of Council decisions. All three took the position that after the no-objection procedure had been completed, it would run counter to long-established Council practice to reopen a document already agreed. In this connection, these representatives also observed that Sierra Leone did not raise its objection until more than three months after the end of the NOP. The Russian representative emphasized that discussions had spanned “a lengthy period and all delegations had the opportunity to raise their concerns” during that time.

 

Of the delegations of Sierra Leone, the United States and France, which supported revisiting the Introduction despite the end of the no-objection procedure, none spoke of such a step as standard practice. Rather, they all appeared to suggest that this was a unique case which justified being treated as an exception.

 

This view was countered by the Russian, Algerian and Chinese representatives, who supported uniform application of the Council’s standard practice with respect to no-objection procedures. The Russian representative asserted that Council decisions “cannot be revised ex post facto”, and underlined the importance of not setting “potentially dangerous precedents”. The representative of Algeria recalled a case during his country’s Council presidency in January 2025, when his delegation “chose to indefinitely postpone the adoption of the PRST on cooperation between the United Nations and the League of Arab States . . . rather than undermine the sacrosanct procedures of this Council.” He recalled that during closed consultations in that connection on 17 January, a representative of Sierra Leone itself had unequivocally stated that, “NOP is NOP.” In Algeria’s view, for the Council to shift on the finality of no-objection procedures in the case of the 2024 Introduction would “not only contradict previously stated positions, but also raise serious concerns about the consistency and the reliability of our collective commitment.”

 

After this discussion, the Annual Report was officially adopted without objection. However, the representative of Sierra Leone, in her earlier intervention, had stated that “we must formally dissociate ourselves from the impugned section of the report”, and added that Sierra Leone had “conveyed our concerns in writing to the presidency and have copied the President of the General Assembly” (see S/2025/343). The representative of France likewise indicated that her delegation had put its concerns in writing.

 

Not reopening decisions once they have been adopted through a no-objection procedure is a clear and longstanding Security Council practice, whether the decision is a presidential statement, a letter by the President, or a note by the President. Nonetheless, the observance of this principle with respect to presidential statements, as well as the presidential notes by which Annual Reports are adopted, is not always obvious, since after the close of the relevant NOP, the Council holds an “adoption meeting” to formalize the decision. But in fact, from a legal point of view, the decision has already been taken prior to the meeting through the no-objection procedure. This is confirmed, in the case of reading out a PRST at an adoption meeting, when the Council President customarily says, “Following consultations among Council members, I have been authorized to make the following statement on their behalf” (our emphasis), indicating that the decision to authorize the President to make the statement predated the meeting.

 

As mentioned above, the representative of Sierra Leone said that her delegation “must formally dissociate ourselves from the impugned section of the report”. For a Council member to dissociate itself from a Council decision taken by consensus is allowable Council practice. It is to be understood, also as borne out in past practice, that dissociation is a political stance with no legal implications. That is, despite the dissociation, the decision is nonetheless considered legally to have been fully adopted, without any qualifications or limitations.

 

It is possible for a Council member to dissociate from a decision either in full, or in part. A past case of dissociation in full occurred with respect to presidential statement S/PRST/2011/16 on Syria. After the statement was adopted, the representative of Lebanon affirmed her country’s dissociation from the PRST as a whole. A dissociation in part occurred regarding presidential statement S/PRST/2015/15, also on Syria. At the adoption meeting, the Venezuelan representative confirmed that his delegation had “joined in the consensus”, but was dissociating from two paragraphs of the statement.”[3] From the remarks by the Sierra Leonean representative at the 2024 Annual Report adoption meeting, it is clear that her delegation’s dissociation applies solely to the Western Sahara part of the Introduction. It remains to be seen from its wording whether the written communication by France, mentioned by the French representative, will also constitute a dissociation, or will simply convey criticism of the text or how the matter was handled.

 

Since the Council began adopting its Annual Report without a vote in 1994, the position taken by Sierra Leone is the first time there has been a dissociation – in whole or in part – from adopting the report. However, during the Council’s first decade, when the Annual Report was agreed through voting at private meetings, the respective communiqués for 1950 and 1951 indicate that “the Council, by a vote of 10 to none with one abstention (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics), approved the final text of the report.”[4] 

 

It is established practice that each year when the General Assembly takes up the Council’s Annual Report, the Council President for that month makes a statement presenting the report. Paragraph 153 of S/2024/507 provides that “The President of the Council for the month in which the report is presented to the General Assembly will also make reference to the verbatim record of the Council’s discussion prior to its adoption of the annual report.” It is possible that one or more Council members will propose that reference to some of the points raised at the 30 May adoption meeting be included. However, as the President’s statement is customarily agreed through an NOP, this would require full consensus. Of course, the Council President and any other Council members, as members of the General Assembly, may speak in their national capacities on these issues during the Assembly discussion.

 

Given the last-minute issues which arose concerning the 2024 Introduction with respect to its section on Western Sahara, it can be assumed that the perusal by Council members of future draft Introductions will be very focused, creating the possibility of a longer and more intense approval process. In this connection, it will fall to the delegation of Pakistan to draft the Introduction to the Council’s 2025 Annual Report, and this is likely to be the responsibility of the Democratic Republic of the Congo for the 2026 Annual Report.

 

The deadline for adopting the Annual Report set out in paragraph 151 of S/2024/507 is 30 May. The issue of how the 2024 Introduction framed the question of Western Sahara, and related procedural disagreements, should not obscure the Council’s achievement in adopting the 2024 Annual Report according to this prescribed timeframe, which has not always been the case.

 

(This update supplements pages 585-590 in the book.)

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[1] However, S/2024/507 stipulates that “In the case of the presidency for the month of July ending its tenure on the Council that year, the task of coordinating the introduction of the report shall then devolve on the member of the Council next in English alphabetical order and who will not be leaving the Security Council that calendar year.”

[2] S/PV.9927.

[3] An example of a dissociation from a letter by the Council President occurred in 2016 when the Council President sent a letter informing the Secretary-General that the Council members had taken note of his intention regarding an appointment and a nomination to the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals (S/2016/194). This presidential letter included a final sentence which stated that “The members of the Council also note the position expressed by the Russian Federation in a letter to the Secretary-General dated 27 February 2016 (S/2016/197).” This latter letter stated that “While the Russian Federation will not stop the President of the Security Council from sending a response to your letter, it does not support the proposed appointments”.

[4] S/PV.500 and S/PV.557.