Security Council to meet in Nairobi next month to discuss Sudanese issues

The Security Council voted unanimously today to hold a two-day meeting next month in Kenya – only the eleventh time in its history that it will have met away from United Nations Headquarters in New York – to discuss the civil conflicts engulfing Sudan.

In a resolution adopted this morning, Council members agreed to meet on 18 and 19 November in the capital Nairobi, where peace talks have been taking place to try to resolve the long-running civil war in southern Sudan.

The Council meeting will also discuss the conflict in western Sudan’s Darfur region, where more than 1.65 million have been displaced from their homes and tens of thousands of villagers have been killed or died from hunger or disease.

The resolution authorized the Council to discuss the issues with representatives from the African Union (AU), which has a ceasefire monitoring mission in Darfur, and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), which has supervised the peace talks for southern Sudan.

Earlier this month, Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry of the United Kingdom, which holds the Council’s rotating presidency for October, told reporters that the visit to Nairobi had been organized to underline the international community’s support for a resolution to the two conflicts.

This will be the Council’s first formal meeting in Nairobi. It has also convened in London, Paris (twice), Geneva, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; and Panama City, Panama; as well as several venues in New York State other than at UN Headquarters.