CYIL vol. 10 (2019)

CYIL 10 ȍ2019Ȏ TEN YEARS AND ONE HUNDRED OF REVIEWS OF THE UNITED NATIONS … Also, in absolute numbers, Table 1 testifies to the importance of the Ombudsperson procedure for petitioners. At the end of 2018, there were 265 individuals and 83 entities on the IDAQ List. The Ombudsperson procedure is nothing marginal or sporadic and dozens of per cent of possible users decided to use it. The evidence of this is that there were 55 delisted individuals and 28 delisted entities between 2011 and 2018. V. Conclusion In 2009, the Office of the Ombudsperson was established by the Security Council as a new element in the sanctions review process. The Ombudsperson was mandated to receive requests from individuals and entities seeking to be removed from the Al-Qaida and Taliban sanctions list (since 2011 only from the Al-Qaida list, currently from both the ISIL (Da’esh) and Al-Qaida list). Almost ten years after the formal establishment of the body and nine years after the first request was delivered to the Office, we can evaluate the interest of listed persons into this mechanism and the position it has built among other sanctions review possibilities. The quantitative analysis, based on data on cases and requests received and completed by the Ombudsperson between July 2010 and May 2019, shows how huge the interest of petitioners was in the first year of the operation. We can conclude that individuals and entities on the sanctions list had been awaiting such a mechanism and approximately half of the requests were lodged in the first two years (between July 2010 and June 2012). The decrease of the caseload in the following periods is perspicuous and indicates the reduction in the demand of the review mechanism. However, there are still new cases opened every year (with distinct freezing between July 2017 and August 2018 when the position of the Ombudsperson was vacant) and the need of the Ombudsperson procedure has definitely not been exhausted yet. The analysis shows that the time period between the listing and the submission of a delisting request has not shortened significantly. This knowledge can be interpreted as that not all of “old” listings (i.e. listings before the Ombudsperson mechanism was introduced or before the Focal point for delisting was established in 2006 as the first UN attempt to improve the access of listed persons to review) have been challenged yet and some perspective petitioners are still waiting. The period between the submission of delisting request and the decision of the IDAQ Sanctions Committee has not developed significantly either. Besides the Ombudsperson system, the petitioners may submit their delisting request to the Sanctions Committee also through Member States or passively rely on the triennial review process, carried out by the Sanctions Committee and assisted by the Monitoring team. Available data demonstrates that the “popularity” of the Ombudsperson procedure is comparable with other means of listing review and that the delisting carried out on the basis of Ombudsperson recommendations does influence the number of individuals and entities on the IDAQ sanctions list materially.

dated 8 May 2012 from the Chair of the Security Council Committee pursuant to resolutions 1267 (1999) and 1989 (2011) concerning Al-Qaida and associated individuals and entities addressed to the President of the Security Council’ (10 May 2012) S/2012/305.

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