Civil Society Dialogue with United Nations Security Council President, H.E. Ms. Christina Markus Lassen (Denmark)

Friends and colleagues, good afternoon and welcome to WOFUNA's monthly CSO dialogue. My name is William Yodov, and I have the pleasure of moderating this event and welcoming all of you on behalf of the World Federation of UN Associations. WOFUNA works to strengthen the UN through the grassroots activism of more than 100 national associations around the world through initiatives such as this one you are taking part in today. As part of the UNSC Transparency Initiative, we host these monthly dialogues for civil society representatives with the President of the Council. They are opportunities to hear from the President about their work plan and the plans of their presidency, to ask for clarifications and to raise matters for their attention and to offer polite scrutiny of the Council's work. The involvement of civil society is indispensable to build a durable peace. Through dialogues like this one today, we can strengthen the links between the Council and civil society around the world. We are very honored today to be joined this month by Her Excellency Christina Markus Lassen of Denmark. During its presidency, Denmark's priorities include standing up for international law, including humanitarian law, pushing for a more accountable, effective, and representative Security Council, strengthening peace operations, addressing the effects of climate change on peace and security, and implementing the Women, Peace and Security Agenda. We look forward to hearing more from the Ambassador about this program of work. Before giving her the floor, a few housekeeping reminders. Interactions should focus on the UN Security Council, Please keep your mic on mute when you are not speaking. This event is being livestreamed on UN Web TV. After all pre-submitted questions have been asked, and if time allows, we will allow questions from the floor. As usual with online events, if we run into any technical difficulties, please be patient as we try to resolve them as soon as we can. Ambassador Lassen, a warm welcome.

Thank you.

Thank you very much. The floor is yours.

Thank you so much, Bill, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us here today, both here in the room live and also those of you who are following online and on WebTV. Very happy to be here with you today to present the priorities of the Danish Presidency of the Security Council for this month. Bill, I think you already mentioned some of our priorities. Those are actually our priorities for our whole membership, but we're not that optimistic we think we can do it just in this month. But certainly, what we're trying to do, and I hope you'll also agree with me when we talk about the program, we hope that these priorities we really have been working out for throughout our membership would also be clear in this month within the frames of what we can actually do as a president. But before I get into the program and before I start, I really wanted to just also acknowledge the work of all of you, the many organizations and and representatives of civil society present here and following here today. We believe that civil society organizations are critical to our work here at the UN, in particular on the Security Council, where we need— I think you said polite scrutiny, Bill. I think that's a great word, a great phrase. But also, of course, all the advocacy you do out there in the field supports us. Your publicity helps us also push for progress. In the Council, but also the information we get from many of you. We work on a daily basis, really, with NGOs out in the field who give us really valuable information that we use every day in the Council work. So I wanted to remind you, I hope you already know that, that you have an ally in Denmark on the Council, and that our team is always willing to engage with you, not only during the presidency, of course, but throughout our membership where we still have 5 months left, luckily. We'd love it to be even more, but I don't think that would happen. I wanted to also, just before I start, point out our membership of the ACT Group. This is something we take very seriously, our sort of commitments with the ACT Group, and really just promoting the transparency and efficiency of the Council. So we have also adopted some working methods commitments. Which you could find on the table, I think, and on our website. You can also access our program and other information through the QR code card that's on the table. This is obviously for people in this room. So I hope you have had a chance to familiarize yourself with that. Getting to the program in this month, I think it's clear to say, and you will all agree with me probably, that we assumed the presidency of the Security Council at a time of really deep uncertainty for international peace and security. This is obviously our second presidency now after having served on the Council for a little more than a year and a half, and we surely do acknowledge how difficult this time is and also the dynamics on the Council. But at the same time, we have not— we've chosen not to be deterred by that, and we want to raise these issues even though they are really difficult. And you will see that also in the Council agenda. So just to say, we don't assume that we can suddenly solve any of these major conflicts that we see out there, but obviously we have to continue pushing them during this month's work also. So in the program of work, you'll see we have a number of mandated meetings as every month. We have South Sudan, that's already this coming Thursday. We have Yemen, Libya, the Occupied Palestinian Territories, DPRK, Syria, and we have the fight against terrorism, and the terrorism meeting is actually already tomorrow. And this will, of course, be complemented. It's a relatively light program if we just look at the mandated meetings, but we do assume and we already know about several additional meetings which may be added throughout the month, and the way we already see it is that we'll really get around very critical regional and thematic files throughout the Council. Agenda. We believe, and I hope you will agree with me, that we have been a consistent Council member throughout our term, consistent in exactly what you were mentioning, Bill, in our demands for international law being upheld, including international humanitarian law being upheld without exception, but also in upholding our priorities on women, peace, and security, and climate, peace, and security, and more broadly working with the Council of delivering on its mandate. And obviously, I think on these 2 cross-cutting issues that I just mentioned, WPS and CPS, I think you will all appreciate that this has not been the easiest time ever on the Council to work on those issues, but still we've been trying to focus and push those issues as much as we can. So we've been trying to really bring it into our daily work, also on the country-specific files, rather than having very separate events on these issues, but really bringing them in through the daily work on the specific file. And as I said, it might not be so visible always for observers outside the Council that we've been having these discussions inside, but it has certainly been very extremely important for us to continue pushing it, and I think also with good results. We are a member of the Shared Commitments on Women, Peace and Security. And we'll have our first— we'll have our WPS stakeout actually on Thursday morning before the meeting on South Sudan. We're also a co-coordinator of the group of joint pledgers on climate, peace, and security. And so, in addition to the WPS stakeout on South Sudan this Thursday, we're also planning a CPS, or climate, peace, and security stakeout on Libya. I think that's the 18th of August.

Yes.

In addition to that, we didn't sort of specifically choose country-specific files as priorities, but it's clear through our Council membership that 2 country situations we have focused a lot on, and particularly on, has been Sudan on the one hand and Ukraine on the other hand. We do believe that on these 2 files, Council engagement remains really urgent. In Sudan, as you all know here, it's the biggest humanitarian crisis in the world, one of the world's most violent conflicts, if not the most violent one. And here we intend to continue pressing for stronger protection of civilians, greater humanitarian access, and renewed efforts to ending the conflict. Nothing so much new in that, unfortunately, but we have decided to give it an extra push this month. And actually, together with the UK, who's the penholder here, we've already called for consultations, close consultations tomorrow. On the humanitarian situation in Sudan. So that will be our first engagement on Sudan, and you'll see we also will intend to do other meetings throughout the month. On Ukraine, again, another conflict where unfortunately I think we've seen an escalation over the last few months, and we're extremely concerned about it. This has also been reflected in the high number of Council meetings on Ukraine. We've had almost every single week, if not every 2 weeks, in this since late June, I think, on Ukraine, reflecting the very— the increase in attacks against Ukrainian civilians, civilian infrastructure. So we will also continue our focus on that conflict and continue our call for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire, as well as our support for a comprehensive, just, and lasting peace in line with the UN Charter. So that's— you've heard us say that many times before, but it's just important for us to keep this conflict and the consequences of Russia's aggression firmly on the Council agenda. Then, as it's the sort of general rule here, we also have a signature event. Some have more. We have chosen just to have one so-called signature event where we're focused a little bit more on a thematic issue. And what we have focused on is something we have realized throughout our Council term, that we have seen that where conflicts erupt, hunger often follows. And that's why we will, under the leadership of our— or chairmanship of our Foreign Minister, on the 25th of August, have a high-level open debate on conflict and hunger. It's also an issue we have championed together with— it's now Bahrain, who's our co-focal point, but we are the co-focal focal point on this issue in the Council, and we want to use this occasion to see how the Council can better implement Resolution 2417. We believe that several of the major conflicts we see right now underscore this issue. One example is the conflict in the Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz, where we have seen that the lack of freedom of navigation has really led to food insecurity in many other places in the world, in particular some of the poorest countries. But we've seen the same also over the year in Ukraine. You remember from the beginning, we had very serious problems with grain exports through the Black Sea. That problem seems to be really recurring right now. It is, of course, harvesting season, so we're seeing that problem reoccur. And several of these conflicts, as I said, really come together in this conflict and hunger issue. So, we will have a discussion about that on the 25th. We'll also have the— this is not a signature debate, but it is an open debate, the annual open debate on working methods. We have planned that for the 19th of August. That normally also is a popular event for member states. It's of course about working methods in Security Council, but we believe as an elected member and a permanent member of the GA, so to say, that this is important for all all members, member states, to have their say and inspire the Council with whatever there may be of ideas and suggestions for improving of the Council working methods of the Council. So we look forward to that debate. Then in addition to the things already on the agenda, we have some known unknowns or so meetings we're expecting to come, but we cannot yet confirm. One issue that we really hope to discuss this month is this upcoming review of the Secretary-General of all kinds of peace operations. As you know, we've been waiting for this report for a while. We hear that it's now almost there. It's in translation. So we would, together with Pakistan, who has been our sort of counterpart on this— we've done a peacekeeping duo in the Council focusing on the future of peacekeeping, but this is of course going to be about peace operations more generally. We would like to, as soon as we have this report, have close consultations and discuss this among Council members and see how we can follow up. We also follow, and that was mentioned by several members also when we presented our programme, the situation in Lebanon very closely, where the Secretary General has put forward some options for a post-UNIFIL presence that the Council has yet to discuss. We will continue following, and I think we will certainly see that on the agenda too, the situations in the West Bank and Gaza. Unfortunately, we see it's a continued deterioration of the situations here. We've obviously been encouraged by the news last week that there was some deal on the— On the— leading from the ceasefire agreement on the disarmament of Hamas and the withdrawal of Israel. But then again, over the weekend, we had some new reports about attacks with many casualties over the weekend. So certainly something we'll continue to follow. And all of that, I think you can expect to see meetings on that. Then there is an issue that's not a typical council issue, but except for every 5 or 10 years, which is the selection process of the Secretary-General. You saw last week we had a lot of engagement on that, both in the GA but also in the Council. I think in July alone we had 4 dialogues with candidates, Secretary-General candidates, and then we had, of course, last Thursday the first straw poll. So we expect to have— conduct another straw poll during our presidency, and if new candidates will announce themselves. Of course, we will also have to organize the necessary contact with the Council once they've also had a chance to engage with the General Assembly, as we have agreed to in our modalities. So that's another thing that could pop up in this August that seems not so quiet now when I actually start reading about all of this. I think it will be a busy month, but we're all here, we're all in town, and we'll of course approach, use the same approach we've had throughout our membership, which is we try to be transparent, we try to be reliable, productive, and inclusive in what we do. And that's the approach we have taken. And on that note, I just wanted to mention, of course, our commitment to engage and include civil society briefers. We firmly do believe that civil society briefers can really enrich the discussions. of the Council, and that we at member states do not have monopoly on good ideas. So we try to bring in voices from the ground, so to say. You will know that we have seen a decline, unfortunately, over the last years in the number of civil society briefers or representatives briefing the Council. So we will try our best to give this an extra push this month. We particularly focus on women civil society briefers, also to be in line with our membership on the shared commitments, or our commitment to the shared commitments of the WPS. So that's something you'll also see from our side. It's always difficult because we want to also protect our civil society briefers. So I can tell you that in the preparation of a presidency, we realize now these 2 terms that it's almost the most time-consuming things because we want to make sure to find the right people, but we also want to make sure that we don't put anyone in unnecessary danger. So it's actually quite complicated, but we think whenever it does succeed, it's really valuable for the Council's discussions. So with that, Bill, I think over to you, and you already have picked out some questions, I think. Not that I know what they are, but go ahead.

Thank you very much, Ambassador, for your overview of the programme of work and Denmark's priorities. We will now start our pre-submitted Q&A segment, beginning with situation-specific questions. Before moving on to thematic questions. When called upon, please state your name and your affiliation and be concise with your questions. We have very little time today to allow others to ask their questions as well. Our first question is from Improve Your Society Organization.

Yes.

And I'll take 3 questions.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ambassador. I'm Khaled Al-Idrisi, representative of the Arab University Organization from Yemen. In the light of the escalation— in the light of the escalation of regional tension and growing concern about the renewed military escalation in Yemen, what concrete steps will the Security Council take to prevent Yemen from once again becoming an arena for regional conflicts while ensuring the protection of the civilians from the consequences of further escalation? Thank you.

I'm going to take 2 more questions. The next one is from Human Rights Watch.

Yes.

Hi, thank you. I'm Widat Franco with Human Rights Watch. You mentioned this initiative on Sudan that you're bringing to the Council along with the UK, the penholder. We were wondering if Denmark can push for some overdue UN Security Council action, including sanctions that could include the UAE, given that the UK has taken a very cautious approach. And as a follow-up on Lebanon, since you also raised Would Denmark push for specific action on post-UNIFIL options, including extending UNIFIL's mandate? That's an option that seems that would— the majority of Council members could get behind. Thank you very much.

Is the House of Africa here? What about the Episcopal Church?

Yes.

Thank you very much for this opportunity to meet. My question relates to Haiti, which is, I know, not mentioned necessarily on your agenda, but we know that there has been some recent action with obviously the Security Council mandated backing of the gang suppression force. question relates to that. We were wondering if whether you have any concerns or the Security Council has any concerns that you would be willing to also address about resource limitations with the Gang Suppression Force, and if so, how those concerns can be addressed.

Thank you. Thank you very much.

All very Thank you, Mr. President.

Thank you, Mr. President, for your very relevant and pertinent questions. And I think on the first issue, on Yemen, obviously we discuss Yemen very often on the Council. For a long time, we have been focused on the really dismal humanitarian situation, of course also on the abductions of several UN personnel and NGOs. somewhat relieved that Yemen has somehow managed to be kept out of the recent spike in the regional conflict. As you know, of course, during the war in Gaza, there was a different situation, but then we have actually not seen renewed attacks in the Red Sea over the last many months, and that has suddenly changed now. So, I think everyone is doing what they can to encourage and put pressure on the Houthis not to continue dragging Yemen into this situation, which is already in such a dire situation, as I mentioned. And that's where we try to do what we can. We have been calling on the sort of global conflict in the region constantly for de-escalation and return to the diplomatic track. That's also what we are hoping we're seeing now. But obviously, this Houthi angle and also the conflict with Saudi Arabia gives the whole thing another dimension that we are all hoping, I think, to calm down before it escalates further. So that's certainly going to be one of our messages. when we have the meeting on Yemen in 2 weeks, I think. I don't remember the date. It's maybe the— no, it's here.

The 13th.

The 13th, so it is next week actually, with Hans Grönberg, and we will hear also his newest reports from the country and what he advises the Security Council to do. So certainly something we'll do whatever we can not to widen that conflict even further. On Sudan, again, I think part I think part of our aim here is also just to keep it on the agenda. We tend to see Sudan overshadowed by so many other conflicts, even though it is one of the most serious crises— 40 million people forced from their homes, 9 million internally displaced, and then of course we have 30 million people in need of humanitarian aid. It's really an unprecedented humanitarian disaster, and that's exactly what we're actually calling the closed consultations for, tomorrow is to focus particularly on the humanitarian situation, to make sure that we also continue seeing improvements of the humanitarian access. We are also extremely concerned about the continued attacks on healthcare facilities, another thing we want to highlight during our presidency. And then, of course, we've all been watching the situation around Al Obaid. We don't want that to develop into a new al-Fashir. It seems for now that the international pressure here has actually— and we had quite a lot of focus on it, and various international actors have, I have to say, on trying to avoid a new, basically, disaster around Al-Ubaid, and right now we're seeing a little bit of step down or standing down on that crisis. But to your question about how the Council can be more active, we believe that having the meetings alone is important. We also believe that we should push, and that's something we are raising also in our normal interventions, is that we should try to enlarge the sanctions regime, not just to encompass Darfur, but the whole country of Sudan. That would be one very important step. We also need to see what we can do about the increased use of drones in that conflict and see if we can maybe add some specific sanctions on drones. And then we have, of course, the whole question of violence against civilians, protection of civilians. That's been a problem since the beginning of the war. You also know it has been very difficult to adopt anything on this issue in the Council, and we had a veto by Russia when it was last attempted in November of 2024. So maybe that's why we've also seen some caution in putting too many new products there. But I think our continued discussion in the Council, both in the open format but also importantly in the closed formats, is something that hopefully can get all the Council members on the same, on the same page here. I think it was you who also asked about Lebanon. And again, we don't have a preferred option here in that sense, but we do believe that when the decision was made to phase out UNIFIL by the end of the year, it was quite a different situation in Lebanon. This was before the last war and before also Israeli occupation of some sites inside Lebanon. So we need to also have that in consideration, take that in consideration now when we decide what should happen after UNIFIL. We would like to have a thorough discussion of the Secretary-General's 3 proposals, and then we would also of course like to listen to the parties, in particular the Lebanese, where UNIFIL has been serving of course since 1976, I believe. So we need to hear from the Lebanese what they find useful in this situation where, of course, they really need some support to the Lebanese Armed Forces to handle the situation. There was a last question on Haiti, and Haiti is not on the agenda this month, mainly because we just discussed it last month. We have meetings. We also had a chance to discuss bilaterally with both the head of the Gangs of Force and also the head of BINU. I think we were actually somewhat— I don't know what words to use here because positive or encouraged sounds too rosy in this situation, but compared to where we have been, we do see at least the 3 organizations on the ground working together. Yes, all the resources are not there yet, but we got reassurances that we will see very soon the whole mandate also fulfilled in terms of number of troops within the next few months. We, as I'm in particular, were encouraged to see that actually there's a good cooperation, it seems, on the ground, and the UNSO office is— or support office is supporting the Gang Suppression Force and in place. So in that sense, I think we were positive. We have had some very clear concerns about— because this is a little bit atypical, mission. So we were quite engaged when we did adopt the mandate last year, particularly pushing for some of the CAC provisions in that mandate and also human rights provisions, because of course it is a very special situation in Haiti with so many of the gang members being children, basically 50% according to the assessments we hear. So you also need to factor this in when you have when you want to, as it says in the mandate, I think, neutralize these gangs, you need to really— and you need to really have big considerations here. And that we were quite reassured also when we spoke to the head of the Gang Suppression Force, when we heard about some of the really clear considerations and UN standards being used by that force to avoid these kinds of situations that we would not like to see when it comes to children or anyone else, by the way. I mean, some quite clear human rights obligations. So I think that was, that was useful in that sense.

We're now going to shift focus to our thematic questions. I have a series of questions that have been sent in to us by people that are watching online. The first one is from Professor Farahani from the Subjective Physics Sciences Organization. Your Excellency, Denmark has consistently emphasized the importance of accountability, international law, and the protection of civilians. During Denmark's presidency of the Security Council, does Denmark intend to advance stronger mechanisms to identify, investigate, and hold accountable states or entities that directly or indirectly enable terrorist organizations? If so, what concrete initiatives can the international community expect? The next question is from Einar Jachin from the Major Group for Children and Youth. Your Excellency, given Denmark's commitment to defending international law while adapting peace operations to new realities, how will your August presidency bridge geopolitical divides to ensure that humanitarian protections and climate-related security risks are systematically embedded into Council mandates and peacekeeping transitions? And the third question is from My question is for the Danish delegation, from Katarina Tino from ACT Alliance. What does Denmark see as its legacy on protection of civilians as it prepares to leave the Security Council later this year? And how does it think this agenda item can be moved forward in a world where political will to ensure the protection of civilians is waning or absent?

All right, easy questions. On the first question about accountability and protection of civilians, when it— particularly when it comes— and mechanism, in particular when it comes to states that host terrorist organizations, we do have our meeting already tomorrow, which is the semiannual meeting on 1267, so ISIL, Daesh, and al-Qaeda, and this is exactly some of the issues we look at. We've sort of now had a little bit more under control in Syria, which used to be a huge— a big host of these terrorist organizations, same with Iraq, and now unfortunately we see a resurgence in the Sahel. And those issues we are dealing with both in a thematic way tomorrow at the meeting, but also in our more general country-specific meetings where we— I think as a Council, that's actually one of the issues where there is quite a lot of agreement among Council members to try to— traditionally also on the fight against terrorism. So we do see some mechanisms, or in terms of actually putting collective pressure. I think the challenge right now is in the Sahel, trying to see how we can have the countries in the region work together on counterterrorism while at the same time, of course, respecting human rights. Thank you. And all of the values we've been trying to fight for in the last 20 years' fight against terrorism. So it is a real challenge, but something that I think there's a great awareness of in the Council, and where we have also been helped now by the new Syrian government, who actually joined the counter-Daesh coalition. But certainly not— I'm not sure if this is exactly what the questioner was thinking about, but certainly these are some of the issues that we will look at in that counterterrorism meeting. On the new peacekeeping operations, again, we look forward to reading and getting the SG's review and recommendations. We know a little bit about his thinking from discussing this with him several times. It was something that was already mandated in the Pact for the Future, and obviously we all see the pressure on peace operations. And we have a little bit of dilemma here because because of course a lot of these big peace operations are being criticized for being too much of Christmas trees, having too many different mandates, and I think that's one of the things that the Secretary-General's review would look at, and we very much agree with that. We need to streamline them while at the same time not losing exactly those elements that the question also points to, which is humanitarian protection or protection of civilians, and also the specific transition situations. And I think it was also mentioned climate, peace, and security. We've already seen several of these various elements being under pressure when we have renewed peace operations in the past year and a half. We continue to fight for these elements to still be included in peacekeeping operations. But of course, not all Council members agree on this, although I would say protection of civilians will be a main component on almost every peace operation out there, and also I think in the future. But again, we will need to see what the Secretary-General advocates. We will certainly continue having—

Thank you.

our focus also on having gender advisors, for example, in missions, climate advisors. And then there's a sort of a— it's not directly linked to the setup and the composition of the missions, but we have also been part, I think, of a larger trend of countries that are very concerned about the increasing number of attacks see against peacekeeping operations. And that's why we, together with Pakistan, went together a couple of months ago and drafted a resolution that was about more accountability for attacks against peacekeepers. It turned out it is— it has been a real challenge that there's no clear accountability mechanisms for how these missions follow up, both with the host country and also how the Secretariat follows up. And that's what we try to sort of specify in that resolution, which, as you might have seen, actually ended up having the highest number of general— not just co-sponsors, not just from the Council, but from general membership. We opened it up for general membership. We had 153 countries co-sponsoring that resolution, so it says something about many countries feeling that it's gone too far. We keep seeing attacks on peacekeepers, as we do see more and more attacks on medical facilities, humanitarian workers, and all of these categories, UN personnel more generally. So we're hoping somehow— and maybe that's also a response to the last question, which was about protection of civilians more generally— we need to continue raising awareness about how these numbers are really escalating in an extremely disturbing way. Again, I was mentioning these specific groups, but it's also, of course, civilians in general. And here, what we have also looked at is how, when we look at, for example, attacks on medical facilities, how the increased use of drones in conflicts, again, has also contributed, unfortunately, to the increasing number of civilian casualties, but again, also against targeting against these specific groups. Something we didn't used to see just 10, 15 years ago, but we've seen a very negative trend in the last 10 years. So I think if there's one thing we hope to see when we leave the Council is that at least we have raised the awareness about that and that we have put some measures on track for the Council to take this problem more seriously.

Given the time constraints, Let's take one question and see if you have—

Yeah.

Okay. This is from the Youth Initiative for the Promotion of Good Leadership in Nigeria. Obonia is asking, given the growing links between climate change, land degradation, food insecurity, displacement, and conflict, what concrete measures will the United Nations Security Council take to strengthen international cooperation in addressing these interconnected security challenges, particularly in Africa?

I have to say we very much agree with this question. We do see this as a major challenge right now, how we see a lot of these various factors really come together and increase the level of conflict. Unfortunately, it's not shared by everyone, and that is one of the challenges. For example, if we talk about climate change in a conflict situation and in a Council setting, as you know, for years it's been difficult to raise this on the Council agenda because not everyone acknowledges this link. We do see several situations, and of course I think the questioner was from Nigeria, we see several of the countries in the Sahel, but also on the Horn of Africa, basically, where it's quite clear that climate change does influence both food insecurity, but then also the level of conflict in that region. We try to take care of it whenever— it's mainly the most concrete thing we can do is whenever we work on Council mandates. And I think South Sudan is quite a clear example where we try to keep up that link very clearly, especially on climate change. But other places closer to Nigeria, for example, in the Sahel, we don't have these peace operations anymore, so they're a little bit limits to what we can do other than continuously trying to raise awareness about this issue, which is something we're trying to do. We've chosen this month for our meeting on Libya to show that link also, Libya being in a very fragile situation. We want to highlight how climate change has also sort of further accelerated the crisis. Right now you'll see major demonstrations around because of the heat wave and electricity prices and basically discontent with how these weather-related events are affecting people's ability to live a decent life. And we saw just last year, I think, some major, major floods also in parts of Tripoli or western Libya. So again, we try to highlight these consequences conflicts, where these consequences have an impact on conflicts whenever we can. And I think that's the best we can do on the Council. It's something that's also, of course, an issue for the broader membership and also in the GA for us to deal with, not just on the Council. But there is certainly, in our point of view, a clear link to the conflicts.

Thank you. Okay, I think we have time for one more question, and this has been submitted from the Committee on— to Protect Journalists. The question is, UNSCR 1738, the resolution condemning intentional attacks on journalists and media professionals marks its 20th anniversary this year. And yet journalists continue to be killed and otherwise abused despite their civilian status in record numbers. During your presidency, how does the UN Security Council plan to approach the rightful condemnation and stance against impunity rightly held in this resolution?

No, thanks a lot. It's a great question. And again, it comes back to what I was talking about before. About the general trend we've seen in attacks on civilians, civilian infrastructure, but also in these specific groups who are, of course, also civilian and shouldn't be targeted, whether we talk again about healthcare workers, whether we talk about UN or NGOs, civil society workers, or journalists. Again, as we've seen, again, a very negative trend in attacks on journalists. We are not having a specific focus on journalism during our— journalists during our presidency, But it really goes into the same concern we have, that we see these conflicts becoming more and more violent and the normal red lines for who you attack and actually just keeping in line with international humanitarian law are not being respected anymore. So we need to advocate for this on a general level. It's something we can do in the Council, but it's not something we can do alone. We need to have also the support from civil society and basically all the various groups also highlighting the concerns for their particular— like, as this group is doing also for their particular group. But it is something that is a more general trend that we are very worried about, which is why we have a sort of more sort of general focus on protection of civilians. And then we have chosen also to focus a little bit more about the attacks on healthcare workers and now UN peacekeepers. But certainly journalists is equally obvious. as a real problem. Yes, that's fine.

Okay, our last question today goes to Civicus.

Thank you so much. I'm going to make this brief. Jesalina Rana from Civicus. Thank you for also bringing up the straw polls in your initial remarks. We appreciate that. Last month, as we all know, the straw polls were held at a stage where one of the candidates appeared at a later stage, and the General Assembly dialogues and the town hall with that candidate could not happen, unfortunately. Civicus is also part of the One for $8 billion. We've been tracking the process around accountability and transparency. We also sent a letter to the PGA and the previous Security Council President. Could you clarify whether any future straw polls this month that would take place would only be after all new candidates have had the opportunity to participate in the General Assembly dialogues with member states and civil society? And would Denmark support this approach as part of its commitment to transparent and inclusive and effective Security Council.

Thank you.

No, thank you very much for that. And while we were negotiating within the Council the modalities, this was exactly a very important point for us, that we wanted to make sure that there would be a chance for candidates, like was the case also in 2016, to have a dialogue with the General Assembly, the interactive dialogue before, and informal dialogue with the Security Council, and that's also what we've sketched out in the modalities that were agreed by the Council. As you know, a candidate was announced very, very shortly before. There was an attempt by the PGA to schedule his hearing. It was not possible due to all kinds of logistical questions, which meant that then also the Council didn't have its dialogue. We were not happy about that, but there was nothing that was preventing that candidate to be on the straw poll. We'll certainly do everything we can to have that candidate, and if there are other candidates, go through the process we have agreed on before, before the next straw poll. We have said that we are aiming to, trying to schedule on the 21st of August a new straw poll. That'll be 3 full working weeks after the last one. But again, it depends exactly as you said. There might be new candidates. Maybe we don't have time for that process. So we're looking into that. We're certainly among those who think this is extremely important to have that transparency in the process. We had also argued in the Council for other transparency measures. Not all of them, actually. Most of them were rejected by those who are on the Council more permanently. But one of them was actually about release of the straw polls, because we knew back in 2016 it was a problem that there were leaks anyway. results came out. And there was a lot of resistance against that in the council. And what we saw last Friday was that 1 hour after the actual straw polls, where we have all promised that we will not, um, reveal them, of course, we saw that they were leaked to the public, or at least something that looked like the result. And, uh, and again, that's exactly what we're trying to avoid. We wanted them to have them released, but that was not— there was no agreement in the council. Again, just to ensure more transparency and a more equal footing or basically a baseline for everyone. But in any case, I hope that whenever the next election will be in some years, that everybody would realize it's probably better just to announce the results straight away rather than having all these leaks. Certainly, yeah.

Thank you very, very much for being here today. This exhausts our time, unfortunately. The Ambassador has another commitment and we need to end our session here today. Ambassador, have you had any brief closing comments you want to make before leaving?

I think really just going back to what I said in the beginning about how we appreciate these interactions. It is extremely important for our work on the Council that we get the input. We can read our files here, we hear a lot from the UN briefers, which I have to say are also excellent, but we need to hear also input from all of you, both from the ground but also on the more principled and thematic topics. So for us, this is an ongoing discussion. We've had this before, when we had the presidency, but we actually also meet with civil society outside the presidency format, because again, it's something we want to do on a more continuous level for the Council to remain open and as transparent as possible. And also, again, we need your good ideas. For example, issues like what was just raised about the attacks on journalists very much resonates with some of the concerns we keep hearing in the Council, but also in so many other groups. So we need to hear those facts and figures and your concerns also. So thank you really very much for engaging today. Also, to all of those online that I cannot see, but we really appreciate this opportunity. Thank you to WIFUNA also.

We thank you, Ambassador, for making the time to be here. We know that you're very busy at the beginning of your presidency. We thank all of you who are here who have had a chance to ask questions both online or in this room. We apologize for those that we didn't get to, to ask your questions, but unfortunately we have run out of time. Please stay tuned for further information regarding our next events in this Transparency and Accountability at the UN Security Council initiative. I wish all of you a great rest of your day, a great rest of your week, and thank you for attending this session, and we'll see you the next time. Thank you very much.

Thank you.