Building lasting peace in war-torn societies is among the most daunting of challenges for global peace and security.

Failure is costly: nations emerge painfully from devastating conflicts only to slide right back into violence. Yet success requires sustained international support for national efforts across the broadest range of activities -- monitoring ceasefires; demobilizing and reintegrating combatants; assisting the return of refugees and displaced persons; helping organize and monitor elections of a new government; supporting justice and security sector reform; enhancing human rights protections and fostering reconciliation after past atrocities.

The United Nations has been at the center of expanding international peacebuilding efforts, from the verification of peace agreements in Southern Africa, Central America and Cambodia in the 1990s, to subsequent efforts to consolidate peace and strengthen states in the Balkans, East Timor, and West Africa, to contemporary operations in Afghanistan, Haiti, Iraq and the Sudan.

Recognizing that the United Nations needs to better anticipate and respond to the challenges of peacebuilding, the 2005 World Summit approved the creation of a new Peacebuilding Commission. The Commission is to be supported within the U.N. Secretariat by a Peacebuilding Support Office that will draw on the expertise of the many different U.N. entities involved in peace building, including the Department of Political Affairs.

DPA is prepared to contribute in important ways to this new peace-building infrastructure at the United Nations: providing strategic political analysis and valuable expertise gained through its participation in the design of peace agreements and in the management of post-conflict peace operations in the field.

Peacebuilding Support Offices operating under DPA supervision in Tajikistan, Guinea-Bissau, and the Central African Republic carry out comprehensive peacebuilding strategies that help to unite the entire U.N. presence in these countries in a coherent effort to institutionalize peace.

DPA’s role as the lead U.N. department for electoral assistance is also highly relevant. Member States emerging from conflict have received U.N. assistance in carrying out credible democratic elections that have advanced the cause of peace.