UN approves more transparent procedures for people and entities to get off its sanctions lists

The United Nations Security Council unanimously approved more transparent procedures Friday for the hundreds of individuals, companies and other entities who are subject to U.N. sanctions and want to get off the blacklists.

The resolution, co-sponsored by Malta and the United States, also authorizes the establishment of a new informal working group by the Security Council to examine ways to improve the effectiveness of U.N. sanctions.

Malta’s U.N. Ambassador Vanessa Frazier told the council before the vote that the resolution is a “clear signal of this council’s commitment towards due process.”

It authorizes a new “focal point” to directly engage with those seeking to get off sanctions lists and gather information from a variety of sources to share with the Security Council committee monitoring sanctions, which makes the decisions on delisting, she said. And it requires the reason for the committee’s decision to be given to the petitioner.

After the vote, U.S. deputy ambassador Robert Wood called the council’s unanimous approval “a historic moment,” saying delisting procedures haven't changed for 18 years.

“The international community is demonstrating its commitment to values such as transparency and fairness in U.N. sanctions processes,” he said.

“Security Council sanctions are an important tool to deter an array of threats to peace and security, ranging from the proliferation of arms and weapons of mass destruction, to countering terrorism and preventing human rights abuses,” Wood said.

But he stressed that to be effective, sanctions must be targeted and there must be “robust and fair procedures for delisting when warranted.”

The United States is against indefinite and punitive sanctions, and supports delisting and easing sanctions when warranted, Wood said. “But we are concerned by a growing tendency to prematurely lift sanctions, when the threats that prompted their imposition in the first place still persist.”

He didn’t give any examples but the U.S. and its allies including South Korea and Japan have vehemently opposed Russian and Chinese proposals to ease sanctions on North Korea, which violates U.N. sanctions regularly with its ballistic missile tests and nuclear developments.

Russia’s deputy U.N. ambassador Dmitry Polyansky said Moscow proceeds from the premise that Security Council sanctions “are one of the most stringent and robust responses to threats to peace. Therefore, they should be applied in an exceedingly cautious way.”

“They need to be irreproachable, be substantiated, and they need to be nuanced,” he said. “The use of such sanctions as a punitive tool is unacceptable.”

Polyansky stressed that sanctions need to reflect the real situation in a country and “help facilitate a political process.”

But he said the Security Council doesn’t always follow this approach, and blamed the West for increasingly encouraging the use of sanctions in recent years.