At a high-level meeting held in Costa Rica late last week, the Department of Political Affairs sought to learn from peacemaking experiences in Latin American and the Caribbean as it works to make the UN the best that it can be in brokering peace agreements and in providing advice and support to others who are doing so.

Angela Kane, the Assistant Secretary-General for Political Affairs, joined the Foreign Minister of Costa Rica, Dr. Bruno Stagno, and Dr. Francisco Rojas, the Secretary-General of the Latin America Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO), in inaugurating the 15-16 March event held in San Jose, entitled: “Strengthening Mediation Support, Lessons Learned from Mediation in Latin America and the Caribbean”.

The event, organized jointly with FLACSO, was second in a series of regional consultations carried out by DPA’s Mediation Support Unit, which was established last year in response the call of the 2005 World Summit to strengthen the Secretary-General’s “good offices” for preventing and resolving conflict. The first consultation, with experienced African mediators, took place in South Africa in October 2006. The next, scheduled for May of this year, will focus on peacemaking experiences in Europe and Central Asia.

Related DPA initiatives include the development of a specialized UN website on peacemaking (www.un.org/peacemaker) and the work currently underway to establish a standby team of mediation experts who can be deployed at short notice to assist peace envoys in the field.

The discussions last week in the Costa Rican capital focused, in part, on gleaning lessons from mediating and implementing agreements in Central America, where the United Nations played an important role in helping to bring armed conflicts to an end in the 1990s in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala.

“In many ways, the experience of the United Nations during the Central America peace processes set the tone for many of the activities that the UN carries out throughout the world today,” Ms. Kane told the participants.

Joining UN officials in the discussions were former UN envoys and government peace negotiators, European and Latin American diplomats who have taken part in negotiations around the region, representatives of regional organizations including CARICOM, the Commonwealth and the Organization of American States, as well as experts from think tanks and NGOs working on peace processes in Latin America and the Caribbean.

In addition to examining the Central American cases, panel discussions focused on peacemaking experiences in Haiti and Colombia, as well as on lessons learned from the resolution of territorial disputes, institutional crises, and in addressing demands for truth, justice and reparations for victims of human rights abuses in armed conflict.

Though the United Nations has had important successes in brokering peace agreements in recent years, it requires a stronger system to ensure that its envoys have all the resources, training, advice and support they need while in the field. Through its ongoing efforts to bolster UN peacemaking capabilities, DPA is working to fill this critical gap.