Making Targeted Sanctions Effective - Small Arms Survey

THE STOCKHOLM PROCESS | 36
of specialized professions, with varying levels of knowledge of the
inner workings of the UN and of UN sanctions policy, they would
benefit from a more systematic process of orientation, including
familiarization with the work and best practices of other Expert
Panels and Monitoring Mechanisms. Many experts, however, have
begun their work equipped with only the relevant Security Council
resolutions and rudimentary instructions from their Sanctions Committee.
While these instructions prescribe the mandate and basic
parameters of the investigations, they do not always offer guidance
as to how they might best proceed. Very often, experts have been
left to “make it up as we went along,” only to discover later that they
had inadvertently and needlessly duplicated the work of other panels
and monitoring mechanisms.
§ 71
Information Management
Improvement is also needed in the area of information management.
Currently, there is no centralized, retrievable database for the
documents and information accumulated by the individual Expert
Panels. Indeed, for lack of a home, this material largely remains in
the custody of individual experts, thereby remaining inaccessible to
both the Sanctions Branch and the other Expert Panels and Monitoring
Mechanisms, whose work could benefit from it. There is an
urgent necessity to establish a system within the Secretariat where
the accumulated materials on sanctions monitoring and sanctions
violations can be consolidated and made available to investigators,
monitors, and UN policymakers.
Common Guidelines
§ 72 Likewise, Expert investigations have been hampered by a lack of
procedural guidelines that could assist them in the design of working
methods, investigative procedures, standards of evidence, and
reporting formats. Of particular concern was the need for a clear
and transparent set of principles to assure that investigations and
reports meet the highest evidentiary standards. While all Expert
Panels endeavor to be rigorous, in some cases, their reports have
been found wanting, either because some allegations were based on