Context:
China blocked a proposal by India and the U.S. at the United Nations to designate Pakistan based Lashkar Taiba terrorist Sajid Mir as a global terrorist.
Image Source: The Hindu
More on News:- Mir is wanted for his involvement in the 26/ 11 Mumbai terror attacks.
- The proposal had been moved by the U.S. and co-designated by India to blacklist Mir under the 1267 Al Qaeda Sanctions Committee of the UN Security Council as a global terrorist and subject him to assets freeze, travel ban and arms embargo.
- Article 41 of the United Nations Charter gives the Security Council the authority to use a variety of measures to enforce its decisions.
- The Council regularly creates subsidiary organs to support or implement these measures.
- Among the most common are those measures that are known as “sanctions”, which are generally supported by a Committee.
- There are 15 ongoing sanctions regimes which focus on supporting political settlement of conflicts, nuclear non-proliferation, and counter-terrorism.
- Each regime is administered by a sanctions committee chaired by a non-permanent member of the Security Council.
- The Committee consists of 10 non-permanent members and 5 permanent members of UNSC.
- There are 11 monitoring groups, teams and panels that support the work of 12 of the 15 sanctions committees.
- The 1267 committee, also known as Al-Qaeda and ISIL Sanctions Committee, was set up in 1999 (updated in 2011 and 2015).
- It allows any UN member state to propose adding the name of a terrorist or terror group to a consolidated list, maintained by the Committee, that has affiliations to Al Qaeda and ISIS.
- It discusses UN efforts to limit the movement of terrorists, especially those related to travel bans, the freezing of assets and arms embargoes for terrorism.
- Once an entity or an individual is included in the list it gets designated as the “Global Terrorist”.
- All decisions of the committee are taken through consensus.
- India has successfully proposed the listing of several terror entities in the past two decades, including Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) and Lashkar-e-Taiba.
- Member States may at any time submit to the Committee listing requests for inclusion of individuals, groups, undertakings and entities on the ISIL (Da’esh) & Al-Qaida Sanctions List.
- According to the rules, once a listing is proposed, it will be adopted into the list according to a “no-objections” procedure.
- If any member of the Committee, which comprises all members of the UN Security Council, places a hold on the listing or objects outright to it, the listing cannot be adopted.
- As a permanent member of the UNSC, China can do this any number of times as its term doesn’t run out, and it carries a veto vote.
- The Committee is bound to resolve all such pending issues within six months, but can allow extensions.
- Technically at the end of the six-month period, the “holding” country has to decide whether to accept the listing or place a permanent objection to it.
- However, in practice, many of the listing proposals have had prolonged waits.