Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the United Nations
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Russia backed the adoption of resolution 2272 (2016), on sexual exploitation and abuse in peacekeeping operations. We approached with understanding the initiative of the United States and other States’ delegations to send a signal through the Security Council regarding the unacceptability of such actions. We decisively condemn such crimes and deem it necessary to strengthen peacekeepers’ responsibility for sexual exploitation and abuse.

During the course of intensive negotiations, we were able to craft a text that expanded preventive measures and the fight against this phenomenon, not only to the United Nations but also other missions deployed with Security Council consent. However, we believe it is important to underscore once again that we cannot accept attempts to exclude national peacekeeping contingents enjoying the Security Council’s mandate from responsibility for the commission of sexual exploitation and abuse. This is all the more true as recently there has been a significant number of cases that clearly point to the fact that such crimes were committed by just such contingents of foreign missions.

At a time when the majority of United Nations contingents that are focused on in this resolution are represented by countries of Asia and Africa, it seems the military personnel of Western countries would like to enjoy immunity from prosecution for such actions. This is fraught with the risk of undermining the effectiveness of actions undertaken to fight this evil and could also have an impact on the standing of the international Organization. It could also become a time bomb for the peacekeeping work of the United Nations. Russia hopes that the Secretary-General will use the authority he possesses pursuant to this resolution to ensure that there is transparent and objective investigation of existing cases and the punishment of the guilty in all cases, without exception, regardless of the country of nationality of the perpetrator.

We view the adoption by the Security Council of the resolution today as an exception to the rule. We continue to believe that the issue of the discipline of peacekeepers is not related to the maintenance of international peace and security. For many years these problems have been discussed in various bodies of the General Assembly — for example, the SecretaryGeneral submits his relevant reports to the General Assembly. We strongly support the continuation of this established practice, which has proven to be effective.

We would like to underscore that we are concerned by the fact that the sponsors of the resolution ignored the logical and wise amendments that were proposed by Egypt and were backed by troop-contributing countries (TCCs). This is a case in which the view of the troopcontributing countries must be heard and must be included in the work on Security Council resolutions. We believe it is wrong to pit the Council up against the General Assembly and, even worse, against TCCs.