Implementation 15 built and nurtured. It is important from the outset, and throughout the life of a sanctions regime, to communicate to the affected region the reasons and objectives of sanctions. Better integration of UN sanctions with relevant regional institutions and initiatives would help in this regard, as well as reinforcing and supporting sanctions measures. This was particularly the case given the importance of cooperation among Member States, as well as between Member States, relevant regional organisations and the Security Council’s sanctions actors, to ensuring effective implementation of sanctions. National and regional security is deeply interlinked in regions characterised by porous borders, poorly secured stockpiles of arms, and weak governance capacity. Consultations illustrated both how regional collaboration could overcome these vulnerabilities through information-sharing and cooperation, and how interstate hostility could undermine cooperation and expose the region to further conflict. Sanctions committees need to be more proactive in advocating cooperation in sanctions implementation and in providing guidance on interstate cooperation, especially on border-related issues or where bilateral relations between stakeholder States are inadequate. A number of States’ comments highlighted the importance of regional institutions and initiatives, with their own interest in and responses to the same crisis that triggered UN sanctions, as potential partners for sanctions committees in both enhancing the region’s engagement with the sanctions measures and in ensuring coordinated action between the Council and the region. Regional organisations can provide a political and technical forum for engagement with the sanctions regime, a vehicle both for awareness raising and potentially for the delivery of implementation assistance. Under its mandate from the Security Council, a sanctions committee is the primary interface between the UN sanctions system and Member States. How it engages with the States most directly affected by the sanctions regime (the State to whose territory the sanctions apply, its immediate neighbours, as well as regional and subregional organisations) is therefore a significant factor in building the legitimacy of the sanctions measures and mobilising support for their effective implementation. Individual sanctions committees are increasingly making an effort to engage with stakeholder States to strengthen the legitimacy of the relevant sanctions regime. Committees now routinely invite the principal stakeholders—the State to whose territory the sanctions apply, States from the relevant region, as well as relevant regional organisations—to participate in sanctions committee meetings, to provide a national or regional perspective relevant to