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Security Council extended for 12 months the mandate of the team monitoring sanctions against individuals and entities associated with the Taliban
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, emphasizing its serious concerns about ongoing violence in Afghanistan.
Unanimously adopting resolution 2557 (2020), the 15-member Council directed the Monitoring Team to gather information on instances of non-compliance with the measures, and to facilitate, upon request by Member States, capacity-building assistance, a statement by the UNSC said.
The Council welcomed recent efforts by the Government of Afghanistan and the Taliban in facilitating intra-Afghan negotiations and highlighted the importance of ensuring that the Monitoring Team receives the necessary administrative and substantive support to effectively fulfill its mandate in a safe and timely manner.
This comes as violence remains high in the country despite efforts for peace. On Friday, at least 15 non-combatants were killed in a kaboom in the central province of Ghazni.
Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Afghanistan, Deborah Lyons briefed United Nations
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Security Council that, "Regrettably, the unrelenting violence remains a serious obstacle to peace and a threat to the region. I will admit that we are still compiling this year’s data, but I would like to mention a few provisional statistics on the impact of the violence".
"In October and November, improvised bombs, IEDs, caused over 60 percent more civilian casualties than in the same period last year. In the third quarter of 2020, child casualties rose 25 percent over the previous three months, while attacks against schools in the same period increased four-fold. In the first 11 months of 2020, assassinations by anti-government elements rose by nearly 40 percent compared to the same period in 2019. It is no surprise then, that the Global Peace Index for 2020 ranked Afghanistan as the least peaceful country in the world for the second year in a row". She said.