Inside the UN Sanctions System
When Singapore got a seat on the UN Security Council in 2001, Christine Lee figured she would end up chairing a quiet committee. She was wrong. The job turned into one of the most intense learning experiences of her career.
This is part of my retelling of “50 Years of Singapore and the United Nations” (Tommy Koh, Li Lin Chang, Joanna Koh, 2015, ISBN: 978-9814713030).
Chapter 43 is written by Christine Lee. She shares what it was like to work inside the UN sanctions system, first on the Liberia Sanctions Committee and then as an expert on the Al-Qaida and Taliban monitoring team. Her story covers everything from meeting a war-zone dictator to working on counter-terrorism after 9/11.
Not the Quiet Committee She Expected
Singapore was elected to the Security Council for the 2001/2002 term. Lee assumed her team would take over the Rwanda Sanctions Committee. That committee was basically dormant. It met once a year to rubber-stamp its annual report. Easy work.
But the people behind the scenes had other plans. They thought Singapore’s skills would be wasted on a sleeping committee. A new resolution was being drafted to transform the Liberia Sanctions Committee. Liberia was being hit with fresh sanctions for its role in making the Sierra Leone conflict worse. The committee needed a chair who could handle something real.
Ambassador Kishore Mahbubani, Singapore’s Permanent Representative, jumped at the chance. Lee was nervous. She knew it meant breaking new ground with a steep learning curve. They were both right. It turned out to be a huge and valuable experience.
Face to Face with Charles Taylor
One of the first things Lee’s team did was travel to the region. They met with leaders across West Africa. President Obasanjo of Nigeria. President Konare of Mali. President Kabbah of Sierra Leone. Members of the UN peacekeeping mission in Freetown.
And then there was Charles Taylor.
The trip to Monrovia, Liberia’s capital, was tense. Lee remembers being driven past bullet-ridden buildings. Taylor had launched a propaganda campaign against the UN. Hourly radio broadcasts told Liberians that the UN was targeting their country. Soldiers with machine guns patrolled everywhere. They were even on the roof of Lee’s hotel.
She could not sleep that night.
In Freetown, Sierra Leone, the destruction was just as real. Bomb-blasted buildings. And on the street corners, young people standing around with empty, hopeless eyes. Just watching the UN convoy drive by.
That moment changed something for Lee. The Security Council was not just an abstract body passing resolutions. Its decisions affected real countries, real people, in real conflict zones. The devastation was right there in front of her.
How Sanctions Committees Actually Work
Lee learned a lot about how the UN operates behind the scenes. Here are the key lessons she took away from chairing the Liberia committee.
First, having the right people from the UN Secretariat matters. The Committee Secretary assigned to Liberia was experienced and knew the institutional ins and outs. That made a huge difference. Lee had seen other committee chairs get frustrated and fumble because they got less helpful Secretariat staff. The quality of support often depended on whether one of the five permanent Security Council members (the P5) cared about the issue.
Second, managing the committee members was like refereeing a verbal boxing match. The informal meetings often turned into heated exchanges. Singapore’s delegation learned to keep things moving and still get the job done. They built a reputation for setting high standards and effective leadership.
Third, many of the committee procedures were outdated. Some P5 members did not want to change anything. It took a long time and a lot of effort just to get the other members to approve a rewrite of the committee’s internal guidelines. But once Singapore’s draft was adopted, it became the model for other sanctions committees too.
September 11 Changed Everything
Lee was in New York on September 11, 2001. She was at the office when colleagues started shouting for everyone to come look at the news. The first plane had just hit the North Tower. It was not yet 9 AM.
That day reshaped her career. One of the biggest consequences of 9/11 was the expansion of the 1267 Sanctions Committee. This committee had been created in 1999 under a Security Council resolution targeting the Taliban for sheltering Osama bin Laden and allowing terrorist training camps in Afghanistan. After 9/11, the focus shifted to al-Qaida. The committee became the Al-Qaida and Taliban (AQT) Sanctions Committee.
In February 2004, Lee was recruited by the UN to join the AQT monitoring team as its legal and sanctions expert. There were eight experts from different fields on the team. Their job was to monitor how well countries were implementing the three sanctions measures imposed by the Security Council against al-Qaida, the Taliban, and their associates.
Lee stayed on this team for over eight years, from March 2004 to December 2012.
Three Lessons from Eight Years on the Counter-Terrorism Team
Lee highlights three things she learned during those years.
The tension between the Secretariat and the experts. The Panels of Experts (POEs) were created to bring practical, operational expertise that the Secretariat did not have. The POEs were called the “eyes and ears” of the Sanctions Committees. They went out into the field, gathered information, and met with governments and organizations. Over time, some Sanctions Committees started relying on the experts for advice and direction. This did not sit well with the Secretariat staff, who saw themselves as the guardians of committee procedures.
Working with people from other countries as colleagues, not diplomats. This was a new experience for Lee. As a Singapore delegate, she had interacted with people from other countries across a table. But working as a colleague on the same team was completely different. The eight experts were “stateless” in the sense that they worked as one unit. But each person was also seen as the representative of their region. Lee, as the expert from Asia, found herself treated as the “Asian standard.” She says luckily, the stereotype for Asians was hardworking and effective. She did her best to live up to it. At the same time, she caught herself stereotyping her colleagues too. Some of them, she noticed with amusement, really did fit their regional stereotypes.
The experts became political tools. In the early days, experts were picked for their skills. The criteria were practical expertise, qualifications, and geographic balance. But over time, politics crept in. The most important monitoring teams always had one expert from each of the five permanent Security Council members. Nationals from countries that were currently elected to the Council also seemed to find their way onto the teams. Lee says this was a double-edged sword. Having colleagues from P5 countries was actually useful because of their connections and access. But the challenge for the UN was finding the right balance between real expertise and political representation.
What I Take Away From This Chapter
Christine Lee’s account is honest about both the value and the messiness of the UN sanctions system. She does not pretend it was all smooth.
The Liberia experience gave her a ground-level view of what sanctions mean for actual people. Standing in a bombed-out Freetown, watching hopeless young people on street corners, that was the human cost behind the committee meetings in New York.
The counter-terrorism work showed her a different side. Eight years tracking terrorist financing, monitoring sanctions compliance, and working with experts from around the world. It was a grind, but it mattered.
For Singapore, both roles were significant. A small country chairing a sanctions committee during one of the most turbulent periods in Security Council history. A Singaporean expert embedded in the heart of the global counter-terrorism effort for nearly a decade.
Not bad for a country that was supposed to get the quiet Rwanda committee.
About the Author
Christine Lee is a Special Consultant with the Ministry of Home Affairs. Before that, she worked with international think-tanks and security policy groups. She served as the Legal and Sanctions Expert on the UN Al-Qaida and Taliban Sanctions Monitoring Team from 2004 to 2012. Earlier in her career, she served in the Singapore government across several agencies, including the Public Utilities Board, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Attorney-General’s Chambers. She was Deputy Permanent Representative on Singapore’s Security Council team from 2001 to 2002 and spent eight years as a Deputy Public Prosecutor. She holds a law degree from the National University of Singapore and a Master’s from University College London.
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