General Assembly Security Council

empty

 

 
Mr. President, 
 
Thank you for convening this Open Debate. 
 
2. It has been acknowledged for a long time now that the flagship activity of UN - its peacekeeping operations - is facing severe challenges and is not able to achieve the desired results that of bringing sustaining peace to the areas of its deployment.  
 
3. A series of studies, including the HIPPO report, have pointed out the importance of primacy of politics; the need for regular consultations between the Council, the troop contributing nations and the Secretariat; improved mandate designing and implementation; meeting capability requirements for hostile, asymmetric environments; as well as addressing important elements for sustaining peace, etc. for better results in peacekeeping operations.  
 
4. This is because the nature of peacekeeping has changed substantially, with modern armed conflicts taking place within a state and often involving non-state actors and international terrorist networks. 
 
5. The sheer number of briefings and open debates that continue to be held on this issue in the Security Council indicate that we are grappling with the complexity of issues involved. 
 
6. Operational and logistic issues aside, there is an obvious lack of appropriate investment into the political dialogue and a huge mismatch between resource allocation for peacekeeping and peacebuilding. 
 
Mr. President, 
 
7. This situation of a number of longstanding chronic armed conflict situations has led to serious deliberations here at the UN, especially over the past couple of years on clarifying the concept of sustaining peace which culminated in the adoption of landmark identical resolutions at the General Assembly and Security Council last year.  
 
8. However, it is still not clear how this is to be aligned. The UN agencies that have a major role in implementing the sustaining peace agenda are outside the Security Council, and have little funding support. We all are aware, that less than even 1% of the funds allocated to peacekeeping are available for Peacebuilding efforts. 
 
9. While the normative acknowledgement of the challenges and possible solutions exists, there appears to be only a lip service to match the same with required resources.   
 
10. The long extending peacekeeping missions that go on for decades and elusive political solutions remind us the need to focus on long-term investment in sustainable development, institution building and inclusive political processes.  
 
11. The transitions in Haiti and Liberia are useful test cases for the ongoing discussions on sustaining peace at the United Nations. The ability of the United Nations to invest long term in institution building and sustainable development in these countries would turn them into successful examples of how to achieve sustaining peace.  
 
12. The current peacekeeping mandates include some elements to restore and rebuild the legitimacy of the state authority in order to prevent the relapse of the conflict, and lay the foundations for achieving sustaining peace. However, the challenges in this process include a lack of genuine effort to understand the priorities of the host state and properly incorporate the same into the mandate; and a huge difference between ambitions, capacities and resources. 
 
Mr. President, 
 
13. We may consider whether allocation of an appropriate percentage of funds from the peacekeeping budget to activities related to peacebuilding and sustaining peace in those situations, could be an option to move forward to achieve sustaining peace in the various intra-state conflicts we are facing. This is in the context of the pressure on the already meager resources available for the United Nations development system. 
 
Mr. President,  
 
14. There is a broad and clear agreement on the need for reform. We appreciate the focus of the Secretary-General on a greater collaboration across the three pillars of the UN work so that resources can be reoriented to build capacity to prevent relapse of conflicts. We have noted the intention to co-locate the departments of political affairs and peacekeeping operations for closer internal coordination. We look forward to receiving Secretary-General's reform proposals in the area of peace and security.  
 
15. We hope that our discussions can move forward our collectively efforts to contribute to the goal of sustaining peace. 
 
Thank you.
 
________