UN Sanctions On ISIS Face Major Challenges From ‘Negligent States,’ ISIS-Controlled Territory

For the first time in its 70-year history, the finance ministers of 15 permanent and nonpermanent members of the United Nations Security Council convened Thursday in the U.N. headquarters in New York City. The unprecedented move underscored the severity of the topic of discussion: the threat of the Islamic State group.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew led what he called a “historic” meeting where members unanimously voted to pass a draft resolution aiming to cut off the financial arteries of the group, also known as ISIS, and its affiliates.

More than a dozen states — including Iraq and Syria — are signatories to the resolution, making it an additional and significant  step in the fight against ISIS, but two obstacles could compromise its effectiveness in crushing the group’s finances: the degree to which states implement the U.N.’s new anti-ISIS framework and the diffuse nature of the ISIS threat.

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“The U.S., its allies and international community have made a real effort to build a counterterrorism architecture already at the U.N.,” said David Weinberg, a senior fellow at Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “The problem is that the existing system frequently gets ignored.”

“Some of America’s allies are falling short on this,” Weinberg said. “If there are negligent states, there’s not much the U.N. can do … This shows how low the global floor really is when it comes to countering terrorism. [The UN member states] have not determined how they are going to implement this.”

The newly adopted resolution requires that the United Nations release a detailed report about the state of ISIS’ finances in 45 days. Even without the report, sanctions are not likely to deplete ISIS’ expanding wallet, but they are a necessary step, according to Weinberg, because “unless we address it there will be another avenue the group can fall back on.”

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