By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, March 1 – During the UN Security Council “wrap-up” session on February 28, 74 member states came to listen, compared to only 23 at the end of January.
Inner City Press on Friday asked Permanent Representative Mark Lyall Grant of the UK, which introduced a different reform with the “horizon scanning” Council briefing in 2010, how the two formats differ.
“Both are useful,” Lyall Grant said diplomatically, not surprisingly. Wrap up session “could become as useful as horizon scanning, looking back but looking forward too, unrestricted, unrestrained.”
Inner City Press pointed out that the idea of horizon scanning was that the Secretariat could raise issues that the Council was not yet considering.
Lyall Grant replied, “that was the original concept two and a half years ago, an unrestricted briefing from the Department of Political Affairs, right at the beginning of the month around agreement of the Program of Work. He could come in and say, 'you're deal with this, but what keeps me awake are x, y and z, which are not on the Program.'”
Lyall Grant paused. “It hasn't worked that way for various and obvious reason. If the horizon scanning item have to be negotiated in advance it is less useful. Maybe wrap up is the best way to go.”
As Inner City Press exclusively reported, this month's incoming Council president Russia once suggested that the next horizon scanning briefing should include Bahrain (or, why wasn't Bahrain on it.) Inner City Press got a lot of responses from the region interested in this. But the agenda item never happened.
As Lyall Grant turned to go into the Council for his meeting with Russia's Vitaly Churkin, Inner City Press suggested that in some future wrap up sessions, which are closed to the press, the member states in the audience might be able to give their reviews of the Security Council's work.
Lyall Grant laughed. And that's how it is, in the UN Security Council. Watch this site.
Footnote: while the February 28 session was closed, that evening one Council member told Inner City Press it had shortened its prepared statement while reading it - then another member “went out for more than 15 minutes.” For that, let the audience speak!
