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.

UNSC Sanctions Committee:

• 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.

1267 Committee:

• 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. 

Who is entitled to submit listing requests?

• 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.

What is a technical hold?

• 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.

News Source: The Hindu

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