9543RD MEETING (AM)
SC/15578
6 FEBRUARY 2024
Restraint is required to create the environment Iraq needs to consolidate hard-won stability and realize sustainable progress, the senior United Nations official in the country told the Security Council today, amidst United States air strikes in Iraqi territory on 2 February and the ongoing conflict in nearby Gaza.
“Messaging by strikes only serves to heighten tensions, to kill or injure people and to destroy property,” stressed Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, Special Representative of the Secretary-General and Head of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI), as she briefed the Council on the Secretary-General’s reports concerning missing Kuwaiti and third-country nationals and missing Kuwaiti property (document S/2024/95) and concerning UNAMI (document S/2024/96).
If attacks originating from within and outside of Iraq’s borders continue, this will undo the country’s hard-won stability and other achievements made over the past 18 months, she said. An enabling environment is essential for Iraq to continue on its path of stability and progress, but such an environment requires restraint from all sides. While spotlighting certain progress — including the holding of local elections for the first time in 10 years on 18 December 2023 — she emphasized that climate-change-related events “combine to paint a rather bleak picture, in which existing fault lines come under increasing pressure”.
Also updating on events in the Kurdistan region and the Iraqi Government’s commitment to the issue of missing Kuwaiti and third-country nationals and missing Kuwaiti property, she nevertheless emphasized that swifter progress is needed. Further, the Government’s plans for sustainable progress, real reform and better living standards will become more difficult to realize with each passing year. Therefore reiterating the importance of ceasing attacks and creating an enabling environment, she stated: “It is quite simple: the enormous risks and potential devastating consequences…