
New York, 03 December 2021
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The international community has reached a “turning point” in pursuing justice for atrocities committed by the ISIL terrorist group in Iraq, the new head of a special UN investigative team told the Security Council in New York on Thursday.
A total of 274 million people worldwide will need emergency aid and protection in 2022, a 17 per cent increase compared with this year, UN humanitarians said on Thursday.
With millions in Afghanistan facing starvation as winter arrives, the World Food Programme (WFP) on Thursday urged countries to put politics aside and step up support to avert a potential catastrophe.
Concluding a four-day to visit Burkina Faso, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said on Wednesday that the country faces “a multitude of challenges with severe impacts on a wide range of human rights of its people”.
For two decades, the African Union (AU) has been “a gold standard of regional co-operation”, Secretary-General António Guterres told the fifth UN-AU Annual Conference on Wednesday in New York.
With violence continuing daily throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory, the Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process urged the Security Council on Tuesday to adopt a more coordinated approach to the region.
The UN refugee Agency, UNHCR, is “appalled by a series of deadly attacks” on displaced people in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the agency’s spokesperson told journalists on Tuesday in Geneva.
The UN Secretary-General on Monday called on all Middle East States to transform the vision of a region with no nuclear weapons, or other weapons of mass destruction, into a working reality.
Out now! Season 2 | Episode 16 | She Stands For Peace | Click here: https://unoau.unmissions.org/podcast-series-she-stands-peace
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
It is a pleasure to participate in the annual session of the Peacebuilding Commission. Today’s debate on financing for peacebuilding is of crucial importance.
A month ago, the Secretary-General presented to the PBC his report Our Common Agenda, his vision for the future of global cooperation through an inclusive, networked, and effective multilateralism. Our Common Agenda. That vision includes a new agenda for peace calling for investment in prevention and peacebuilding, including through the Peacebuilding Commission.
Smart, preventive investments to tackle the underlying drivers that sustain conflict have never been as important. The COVID-19 pandemic is stretching our resources and capacities, disproportionately affecting people and places hit by conflict. And the climate crisis not only compounds the challenges we face in peace and security, it poses an existential threat to humanity.
As ambitious as Our Common Agenda is, we really have no choice but to put substantial resources – financial, political and human – to work to build a more peaceful, environmentally sound, stable and sustainable future.
We need to build on the current momentum and ensure adequate, predictable, and sustained financing for peacebuilding.
This idea is at the core of the twin General Assembly and Security Council resolutions adopted at the conclusion of the 2015 and 2020 Peacebuilding Architecture Reviews. The Peacebuilding Commission plays a key role in our concerted effort to help achieve this important objective ahead of the High-Level Meeting on Financing for Peacebuilding.
I would like to point to four key areas that are particularly relevant to consider in this context.
First, sustained financing for peacebuilding is instrumental for our ongoing work on strengthening coherence across the peace and security continuum, including the work conducted by special political missions in close cooperation with development actors, regional partners and civil society organizations.
Special political missions play a critical role, supporting Member States to prevent, manage and resolve conflicts. Our regional office for West Africa, for example, continues to respond to high demand for preventive diplomacy in the region. Working side-by-side with ECOWAS and the African Union, UNOWAS has engaged with authorities and other actors to help build consensus regarding the way forward in political and security processes.
If we are to effectively support Member States on trust, inclusion, social cohesion, and human rights – elements that are at the heart of Our Common Agenda and our collective work on peacebuilding – we need to continue to insist on improving coherence. Adequate, predictable, and sustained financing will allow for better incentives and can foster further collaboration across the UN system.
Second, the strong linkages among peacemaking, peacekeeping, peacebuilding and development are mutually reinforcing. Financing for peacebuilding is key, for example, in safeguarding peacekeeping gains. This ensures effective transitions and averts a “financial cliff” after a mission leaves. Peacebuilding has helped prevent relapses into conflict in Côte d’Ivoire, Liberia and Sierra Leone notably.
The dedicated Peacebuilding Fund window is a welcome contribution in this respect, with a total of $35 million invested in 2020. The transition in Darfur, for example, shows the importance of complementing resources of peacekeeping operations with the PBF investment. It enabled the UN Country Team to continue catalytic peacebuilding programmes after UNAMID’s closure. It also contributed to supporting the new integrated mandate of our special political mission, UNITAMS.
We expect that the largest share of PBF investments during the 2020-2024 strategic period will be directed to support countries undergoing complex transitions when UN configurations on the ground change.
Third, we continue to strengthen our partnerships with international financial institutions and regional development banks, which in recent years have resulted in more in-depth analysis of fragility factors and better understanding of conflict drivers.
This shift towards prevention, conflict sensitivity and peacebuilding in the International Financial Institutions and the resources they bring to bear towards those objectives are potential game changers.
We should not lose sight of the urgent need to make these partnerships more systematic through regular joint analysis and assessments. The creation of a Humanitarian-Development-Peacebuilding and Partnership Facility (HDPP) is contributing in a significant way to this effort, enabling the UN’s field presences to better interact with the World Bank.
Examples of good partnership also include:
We also look forward to deepening our engagement with the International Monetary Fund, in the context of its upcoming Fragility and Conflict-affected States Strategy, and regional development banks, such as the African Development Bank. There is also scope for synergy on climate risk mitigation, since climate change is a risk multiplier in many conflict settings, such as in the Sahel and Horn of Africa.
We should also continue to explore stronger partnerships with the private sector. An initiative with a blended finance facility in Colombia that leveraged close to seven times the funding capital from the private sector is a powerful example that innovative financing solutions can fill the gap in peacebuilding contexts.
Fourth, as Our Common Agenda acknowledges, demand for support from the Peacebuilding Fund significantly outpaces available resources. As the UN’s instrument of first resort to support peacebuilding, the Fund needs additional resources.
The recourse to voluntary, extrabudgetary contributions obscures the fact that prevention and peacebuilding are structural and central objectives of the UN and the Charter obligations.
Voluntary contributions are insufficient: the PBF is currently $90 million below its target for 2021. The Secretary-General’s recommendation to allocate a dedicated amount ($100 million) to the PBF from assessed contributions would indeed have a strong symbolic value.
Additional and more predictable funding would enable the UN to, for example, increase its support for women-led and women-focused peacebuilding initiatives, as urged by many women peacebuilders who have briefed the PBC in the past. More resources for peacebuilding activities would also strengthen the work special political missions are playing in promoting women’s and youth participation in peace and political processes.
Excellencies,
As Peacebuilding Commission Members know best of all, scaled-up preventive action could prevent loss of human life and incalculable suffering.
Adequate, predictable and sustained financing, including through assessed contributions, will allow the UN, through its Peacebuilding Fund, to grow its investments in support of Our Common Agenda.
I look forward to hearing from you on how we can collectively achieve this ambitious objective.
Thank you.
The situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, continues to pose a significant challenge to international peace and security, United Nations Secretary-General, António Guterres, said on Monday.
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The signing of the Final Peace Agreement five years ago generated hope and inspiration in Colombia and throughout the international community, and UN Secretary-General António Guterres said on Wednesday that the achievements are undeniable, and the country’s people should be proud.
With one month left until elections in Libya, it is important that the international community remains united in support of the process, UN Special Envoy Ján Kubiš told the Security Council on Wednesday.
In Colombia to mark the fifth anniversary of the peace accord between the Government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC-EP, UN Secretary-General António Guterres on Tuesday visited a small mountainside village he described as a “laboratory of peace”, where former combatants and civilians are living and working side-by-side.
Following “hard-earned” parliamentary elections on 10 October, Iraqis of all political stripes must exercise restraint, eschew violence and await the outcome’s final certification by the Federal Supreme Court, the senior UN official in the country told the Security Council on Tuesday.
New York, 24 November 2021
Violence against women and girls continues to be the most pervasive and pressing human rights issue in the world today.
It is both an abhorrent crime and a public health emergency, with far-reaching consequences for millions of women and girls in every corner of the globe.
...War-torn Yemen is among the poorest countries in the world, but recovery is possible if the conflict ends now, the UN Development Programme (UNDP) said in a report published on Tuesday.
Beginning on 7 December, ministers from around the world will discuss the technology and medical capacity building of UN Peacekeeping, UN officials said at a press conference on Monday.
Small arms trafficking is a “defining factor in undermining peace and security”, the Director of the UN Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR) told the Security Council on Monday during a ministerial debate.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres is headed to Colombia this week to mark the fifth anniversary of the signing of the peace accords that ended 50 years of conflict in the country, and his activities will include travel to the village of Llano Grande, where the townspeople and former combatants are working together to secure a better future.