Assistant Secretary-General for Peacebuilding Support Ms. Elizabeth Spehar's
Statement to the Security Council on Peacebuilding and Sustaining Peace:
The New Agenda for Peace – Addressing global, regional and national aspects of conflict prevention
New York, 21 August 2024
Mr. President,
I would like to thank the Sierra Leone Presidency of the Security Council for organizing this High-Level Open Debate on Peacebuilding and Sustaining Peace: The New Agenda for Peace - Addressing Global, Regional and National Aspects of Conflict Prevention.
Peace is the foundational goal of the United Nations. Building and sustaining peace is central to the work of this Council and the Organization.
And yet, the number of conflicts is at a decades-long high, inflicting unimaginable suffering, devastating economies and robbing communities of their future.
As outlined in the Secretary-General’s policy brief on A New Agenda for Peace, prioritizing conflict prevention and peacebuilding can contribute to reversing these trends, provide people affected by violence with opportunities, and reduce the human and economic costs of war.
A New Agenda for Peace provides Member States with a roadmap to achieve this, predicated on rebuilding trust among countries, but also within each one of them, rooted in the principles of universality and solidarity.
This morning, I would like to briefly discuss how we could invest in three key areas outlined in A New Agenda for Peace to advance prevention and peacebuilding, in fulfillment of the Charter goals, focusing on: (1) promoting and supporting, voluntary, inclusive, nationally owned and led prevention and peacebuilding efforts and strengthening national infrastructures for peace; (2) ensuring coherence and a comprehensive approach to prevention and sustaining peace; and (3) strengthening critical partnerships and increasing available resources for prevention and peacebuilding.
(1) On promoting and supporting nationally owned and led, voluntary, inclusive, prevention and peacebuilding efforts and strengthening national infrastructures for peace, I would recall that A New Agenda for Peace proposed a paradigm shift in prevention, based on two core principles: first, the idea that prevention should be universal – that no country is immune from the drivers of conflict and violence. Second, the recognition that our focus should be on national action – and national priorities.
The voluntary development of national strategies by Member States could provide important political impetus to this new approach to prevention. Such strategies could help rally different national stakeholders – governments as well as civil society – around common priorities, helping promote social cohesion and strengthen national infrastructures for peace.
As A New Agenda for Peace outlined, developing and implementing voluntary national prevention strategies and peacebuilding approaches can be important foundations for prevention and sustaining peace more broadly.
In terms of how, while each case must be context-specific, successful examples have prioritized a people-centered approach to governance that focuses on equitable access to services and opportunities, strengthening the rule of law and building strong state institutions that are responsive to people’s needs and aspirations. Effective national infrastructures for peace have entailed the development of institutions, processes and policies, not only at the national but also at local levels, that foster political and social dialogue, enable early warning and early response to conflicts and privilege consultation and consensus-building to resolve differences.
The UN system, with its unique expertise, tools and networks, stands ready to support Member States in their prevention and peacebuilding endeavours.
A New Agenda for Peace underscores national ownership as a guiding principle for effective national prevention and peacebuilding efforts. It also emphasizes the need to include diverse voices, needs and participation of all segments of society, which can help make peace more sustainable.
In the Central African Republic, for example, the Peacebuilding Fund has supported programmes to strengthen women community mediators, helping to prevent conflict and sustain peace at the community level, in support of the country’s broader objectives of peace.
Mr. President,
(2) On ensuring coherence and a comprehensive approach to prevention and sustaining peace, A New Agenda for Peace emphasizes the need to address not only the symptoms, but the root causes of violence and conflict.
The best way to prevent societies from descending into crisis is to ensure that they are resilient through investment in inclusive and sustainable development and inclusive governance.
This is why A New Agenda for Peace calls for accelerating the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and for tackling inequality, marginalization and exclusion.
Within the United Nations, the Secretary-General’s 2019 reforms laid the groundwork for a more cohesive development system and peace and security pillar, with peacebuilding entities, such as the Peacebuilding Support Office, helping to more closely link the pillar’s upstream prevention and conflict management and resolution mechanisms to the “structural prevention” work of the UN agencies, funds and programmes. The peacebuilding architecture has created important opportunities for humanitarians, development colleagues and peace actors to work more closely together, in complementarity, leveraging their comparative advantages to contribute to building a sustainable peace.
In promoting a comprehensive approach to prevention and peacebuilding, A New Agenda for Peace has emphasized the necessity of addressing transnational and transboundary threats that can often impact and even derail national prevention efforts, including the adverse effects of climate change, transnational organized crime, and terrorism.
3) On strengthening critical partnerships and making more resources available for prevention and peacebuilding, Partnership with regional and sub-regional actors has continued to grow in importance and in scope, and indeed, the complexity of the conflict landscape requires us to seek and employ all available tools for prevention and peacebuilding.
Regional arrangements are particularly rich in the array of mechanisms and processes available to address prevention and conflict challenges, that can be effectively leveraged when there is sufficient capacity and political will. The regular engagements between this Security Council and the African Union Peace and Security Council (PSC), for example, and a similar partnership between the Peacebuilding Commission and the AUPSC, complemented by increasing joint efforts and mutual support between the Secretariats and the two systems, are promising, and more could be done in terms of concrete follow up to the meetings and tracking the results of these important interactions.
When discussing prevention and peacebuilding, political commitment and the right partnerships are key, but resourcing will also always be central. Funding peacebuilding is what translates commitment and strategies into impact on the ground.
It is worrying to see investments in peace and conflict prevention steadily decreasing while military spending is increasing worldwide. These investments now represent only a fraction of total ODA – 10% for OECD countries in 2023, which is a 15-year record low. At the same time, only last year, research showed that violence cost the world nearly 20 trillion US dollars – that is 13.5 per cent of global GDP.
At the intersection of partnerships and financing, we also need to further explore the relationship between the UN and the IFIs in the context of prevention and peacebuilding. Such partnerships with all major International Financial Institutions, from the World Bank to the regional development banks, are needed to ensure that development investments contribute to lasting peace.
We have come a long way in partnerships with the World Bank. We hope to see a robust replenishment of the International Development Association funds this year, including its fragility envelope, to allow this work to continue. Looking ahead, there are good practices from the UN-World Bank partnership in various conflict and post-conflict settings that could form the basis of a more systematic and strategic partnership.
The expansion of regional Multilateral Development Banks also presents new opportunities for collaboration, with concessional resources in relevant settings that can be targeted to support sustainable peace efforts.
Finally, we need to find more ways for private capital to invest in fragile and conflict-affected settings in a peace-positive manner, and the UN has been making some strides in this direction.
Mr. President,
Prevention and peacebuilding can break the cycle of violence, and lay the foundations to ensure sustainable development is possible for all.
The United Nations, with its unique tools, expertise and networks can play a pivotal role to support prevention and peacebuilding efforts globally. Amidst increasing polarization, strengthening those tools are critical to achieving this mission.
The Peacebuilding Commission has untapped potential to serve as a space for Member States to address structural, long-term efforts to prevent conflict and build peace. Its strong focus on national ownership, as well as its mandate to address issues that lie between peace and development, makes the PBC the ideal body to support national prevention and peacebuilding strategies.
For the PBC’s effectiveness to be enhanced, it is critical for this body to develop a more strategic and systematic relationship with international financial institutions and regional development banks – in order to make financing instruments aligned with national peacebuilding priorities. This would allow the Commission to fulfill its core mandate to help marshal resources for peacebuilding.
There are upcoming milestones that can transform this political vision into tangible action and impact, such as the Pact for the Future, the 2024 Peacebuilding Commission Ministerial-level-meeting, and the 2025 Peacebuilding Architecture Review.
As members of this Council, you have a leading voice in these processes and fora, and in pushing us to move from the “what” of prevention and peacebuilding to the “how” of concrete implementation. I appeal to your leadership to ensure that we collectively seize these opportunities to respond to the challenges ahead.
Thank you.