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7629th Security Council Meeting: Post-Conflict Peacebuilding - Part 2
Member States and the United Nations must stop viewing peacebuilding solely as a post-conflict activity and focus more on coordinated programming and funding to prevent war and relapse into conflict, speakers in the Security Council said today.
“We keep addressing the matter as something that should occur after the guns fall silent,” said Gert Rosenthal (Guatemala), Chair of the Advisory Group of Experts on the 2015 Review of the United Nations Peacebuilding Architecture, at the start of a day-long debate on that subject. The first conclusion of the seven-member panel, established by the Secretary-General in January 2015 to assess the Organization’s peacebuilding performance, was that the term “peacebuilding” should be replaced with “sustainable peace” to shift the emphasis to preventative action, he added.
Olof Skoog (Sweden), immediate former Chair of the Peacebuilding Commission — one of the three bodies subject to the 2015 review — declared: “There are no excuses for not heeding the call coming consistently across the three reviews on United Nations peace operations: ‘We must move prevention of conflict to the centre of our work’.” Also under review are the Peacebuilding Fund and the Peacebuilding Support Office.
The former Chair went on to state that sustaining peace was a political process requiring sound political judgement and programming, as well as adequate political and financial support. It was a tragic irony that billions of dollars were poured into peacekeeping and humanitarian responses, yet conflict-prevention initiatives — which could save so many lives and significantly reduce the need for peacekeeping in the first place — had to scramble for a fraction of those amounts, he said.
Macharia Kamau (Kenya), Current Chair of the Commission, said the 2015 review had been launched amid increasing calls to end fragmentation in the United Nations system’s peacebuilding efforts and to create strategic collaboration across its peace and security, development and human rights operations. The Organization also needed stronger partnerships with regional and subregional bodies, as well as with international financial institutions, in order to build peace.
Like other speakers, he said the lack of priority accorded to conflict prevention was reflected in the shortage and unpredictability of financial resources for peacebuilding. Funding was often directed towards short-term emergency responses that would produce immediate, tangible results, whereas countries emerging from conflict required significant aid over extended periods, he noted, adding that the impact of the Peacebuilding Fund remained limited. “Clearly, the Fund needs to be enhanced,” he said.
Senegal’s representative said the lessons drawn from peacebuilding processes in Africa, particularly Guinea-Bissau, illustrated that point. The Fund currently supported 222 projects in 22 countries, but was far from attaining its goal of becoming a steady flow of resources. He supported the call by the Chair of the Advisory Group and other speakers to ensure that $100 million — 1 per cent of the Organization’s entire budget for peacekeeping operations — was earmarked specifically for peacebuilding.
Several speakers voiced regret that the United Nations peacebuilding architecture had not lived up to its mandate and that its important role had gone unrecognized.
The representative of the United States pointed out that every conflict-affected country on the Council’s agenda had struggled to consolidate peace. The primary challenge was not necessarily the absence of resources, but rather the lack of coherence among peacebuilding actors, he emphasized. United Nations entities must work in a more coordinated fashion, with the Peacebuilding Commission acting as a bridge. In Sri Lanka, where local councils were receiving capacity-building support, and Sierra Leone, where the integrated work of successive United Nations missions had helped break the cycle of violence, coherent internal approaches had facilitated their emergence from conflict, he said. The Commission’s country-specific configurations should be smaller, more flexible and focused, he added.
The United Kingdom’s representative recalled that during the Council’s recent visit to Burundi, he had questioned whether more could have been done to prevent the country’s tailspin into violence. “People on the ground needed more than just words on paper, they needed meaningful action from this Council, and others,” he said. Early warning must be matched with early action, he said, stressing that improved horizon-scanning was of no use on its own.
Echoing other speakers, Angola’s representative said each country had its own timeline for addressing the root causes of conflict, and the Council should refrain from imposing rigid deadlines on the parties involved in resolving outstanding disputes. Agreement on adapting time frames on the basis of each situation on the ground could significantly help sustain peace, he said.
The observer for the African Union said lessons could be drawn from that continent’s conflict-affected countries, which comprised all the Member States on the Commission’s agenda and had received approximately 80 per cent of the Peacebuilding Fund’s resources between 2007 and 2014. Despite general improvement, the risk of relapse into conflict remained very high in Africa and gains from peacebuilding were fragile, particularly during the early stages of transition, as illustrated by the Ebola crisis in West Africa, he said, underlining that policies and programmes must address the transnational nature and root causes of conflicts.
He said the African Union Peace and Security Council had called for stronger links with the Security Council, adding that they should work together to form a common assessment of the nature and scope of peacebuilding challenges, agree on a division of tasks and hold more frequent and structured dialogue. He also called for a “desk-to-desk” exchange between the Peacebuilding Support Office and relevant departments of the African Union Commission and other regional mechanisms.
Some speakers, including Montenegro’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs and European Integration and the representatives of Uruguay and Colombia, underscored the pivotal role of women in peacebuilding. Ireland’s representative called for a clear deadline for meeting a 15 per cent gender marker for peacebuilding financing, saying that the participation of women should also be built into the terms of reference for special envoys and special representatives of the Secretary-General.
However, the Russian Federation’s representative said that, while he recognized the important role women played in peacebuilding, an excessive focus on gender was counter-productive. Eradicating the root causes of conflict was the most important goal, he emphasized. Responding to a previous speaker, he said the idea of moving the Peacebuilding Fund to the regular United Nations budget was contradictory, adding that such a move would create more work while stripping the Fund of its effectiveness and flexibility.
Also speaking today were representatives of Egypt (also speaking on behalf of Spain and Ukraine), New Zealand, China, Malaysia, Japan, France, Venezuela, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Brazil, Australia, Italy, Belgium, Romania, Pakistan, Thailand, Guatemala, Germany, Poland, Mexico, Algeria, Switzerland, Philippines, Ireland, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Finland (also on behalf of Denmark, Iceland, Norway and Sweden), Republic of Korea, Argentina, Slovakia, South Africa, Morocco, Peru, Estonia, Croatia, Costa Rica, Paraguay, Sierra Leone, Netherlands, Botswana, Ecuador, Canada, Rwanda and Turkey, as well as the European Union and the Holy See.
A representative of the Organization of American States also spoke.
The meeting began at 10:07 a.m. and ended at 4:42 p.m.
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