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Mr. Chairman Distinguished Delegates Ladies and Gentlemen This month marks the fifth year of my tenure at the Department of Peacekeeping Operations. One of my priorities then, as now, was to deepen the relationship between the Department and the Member States . UN peacekeeping is the expression of your collective will to assist societies to make the transition from armed conflict to self-sustaining peace. Your commitment to this goal is the raison d'être of the Department of Peacekeeping Operations. Our ability to successfully translate this commitment into effective action in UN peace operations across the globe depends on the quality and effectiveness of our interaction. This commitment can come at a high cost. Let me express my deepest respects for the 86 peacekeeping personnel who paid the price with their lives this year alone. My thoughts today are with their families. Our relationship has deepened over the past five years, with significant results for UN peacekeeping. This Committee and the Special Committee on Peacekeeping Operations has provided much-valued support and guidance to the Secretariat. We have had increased consultation with Troop Contributing Countries, including through briefings and meetings. This has translated into substantial improvements in UN peacekeeping, particularly with regard to the implementation of the comprehensive reform process initiated in the Brahimi Report. It is five years since this milestone in UN peacekeeping, on which we have reported to you each year and on which we will again invite you to reflect, with us, over the course of this afternoon. The most tangible demonstration of our sustained cooperation is demonstrated in the surge of UN peace operations over the past four years and the scope of our activities today. The Department of Peacekeeping Operations currently directs 18 peace operations across the world, comprising 83,000 troops, police and civilian personnel out of an authorized total capacity of 87,250. This represents a five-fold increase in field personnel since 2000 and an increase of over 10,000 personnel since this time last year, when we discussed the surge in peacekeeping activity. I would like to thank again, all of you who continue to contribute military and police personnel to your missions and to welcome countries contributing troops and police UN peacekeeping for the first time in 2005. In the last 18 months we have benefited from 15 new PCC and 8 new TCC s. Let me express my warm thanks to these Members, some of whom have been assisted by UN peacekeeping operations and who are now, in their turn, assisting others. Numbers are only one part of the equation. UN peacekeepers are making a qualitative contribution to the resolution of conflicts. Our 18 operations directly affect over 200 million men, women and children whose lives have been torn apart by the scourge of war. The range of our peacekeeping activities reflects the scope of this engagement: We continue to provide support to stabilize fragile peace agreements and assist political transition processes. In 2005 alone we will have supported the organization of elections in 5 post-conflict countries: Afghanistan , Burundi , Haiti , Liberia , and soon the Democratic Republic of Congo.
We are working to respond to your requests to ensure the effective use of peacekeeping resources. This is leading to innovative new practices in the field as well as Headquarters.
The planning, conduct and support of peacekeeping operations is our core activity: but it is not our only task. The Department supports a growing number of UN field activities other than peacekeeping operations. We are currently providing administrative and logistics support to 13 UN special political missions and offices around the world. Our role as a service provider to other members of the UN family - particularly the Department of Political Affairs - is one we take seriously. Missions such as UNAMI are located in challenging environments where they play a crucial role in the political transition process. Other missions, for example, the UN Office in West Africa , contribute to the success of peacekeeping operations in that region through the provision of political guidance and support on the regional dimension of post-conflict operations. These missions require an equal level of commitment from the Department of Peacekeeping Operations and the Department will remain actively engaged in their support. Another task to which you have assigned high priority is the provision of support to the African Union. The Department of Peacekeeping Operation is actively cooperating with the AU in many parts of Africa , from MINURSO in Western Sahara to Burundi , from Côte d'Ivoire to UNMEE. The range of our cooperation - political, technical, security - is testament to the significance of our relationship for peace and security in Africa . The Department is particularly engaged in supporting the AU mission in Darfur . AMIS is carrying out its mandate in a difficult environment with great seriousness and commitment. The Secretariat is assisting this effort through the United Nations Assistance Cell in Addis Ababa , where DPKO personnel are assisting the AU in mission planning and management. At the request of the AU, the Department of Peacekeeping Operations ran a Map Exercise (MAPEX) over summer 2005 to help AMIS prepare for the demands generated by the expanded mission in Darfur . The exercise acted as a tool to practice and validate operational plans through playing realistic scenarios aimed at exercising decision-making, staff procedures and command and control. Beyond AMIS, the Department has upgraded its support to the enhancement of AU peacekeeping capacities. We are, for example, organizing a series of workshops covering areas such as command and control, communication and information systems, doctrine, training and standard operating procedures. This activity is taking place under the current budget of the Department, which has no 'AU support' budget line. Much more could be done if additional resources can be provided. All of this innovation notwithstanding, the Department remains seriously over-stretched. I signaled this to you last year. Since then, although we have wound down two missions, we have increased our commitments in others. We run the leanest field operations organization in the world. Our personnel in the field - your troops and police - operate in many instances on a more or less permanent state of shortfall. That we have managed well to date is due to the improvements and increases generated by the Brahimi Report and to the dedication and quality of UN peacekeeping personnel. Yet, there are gaps in the Brahimi reform process that continue to weaken our operations today. Not all of the recommendations accepted by you five years ago have been implemented. One such example is arrangements for the development of a system for the rapid deployment of brigade-sized forces. In some areas implementation has been only partial, such as in recruitment and retention of civilian field staff. And there are new challenges. The scope and complexity of current peacekeeping operations has arguably overtaken the Brahimi process. The Brahimi Report was intended to equip the Department to launch one large mission a year: in 2004 alone, we were tasked to establish four. The tasks of UN peacekeeping are often regarded as limited, security-focused activities, such as monitoring ceasefire agreements and assisting disarmament. But the total number of tasks currently mandated to UN peacekeeping operations is 92 in broad areas such as support to public order, protection of civilians, and public administration. The more burdens we put on your personnel in the field, the less innovation and quality we can reasonably demand of them. And lack of capacity to comprehensively plan for and respond to all eventualities - not just the best-case scenario - is putting them at risk. Overstretch also undermines our capacity to manage operations effectively. This was borne out in the past year in one of the most shameful episodes in UN peacekeeping: the allegations and proven instances of sexual exploitation and abuse by military, police, and civilian personnel in UN peacekeeping missions. The damage some of these personnel have brought on the good name of the United Nations is grave. The light at the end of this long tunnel has been the open communication and cooperation the Department has had with you on this question. The scope of our response, and the seriousness with which you addressed Prince Zeid's proposals for a comprehensive strategy to eliminate future incidences of these terrible crimes, demonstrates the impact our cooperation can have on the quality and capacity of UN peacekeeping. The Department is committed to implementing a zero tolerance policy on sexual exploitation and abuse agreed by you. Over the past 20 months, more than 221 peacekeepers have been investigated. 10 civilians have been fired and over 88 uniformed personnel repatriated. Conduct and discipline units have been established at Headquarters and in eight peacekeeping missions to put in place preventive strategies to ensure that sexual exploitation and abuse is eradicated. Ultimately, the eradication of sexual exploitation and abuse in UN peacekeeping missions depends on your enforcement of established standards among the personnel you deploy to peacekeeping missions. I urge you to hold your commanders accountable for enforcing standards in the field. We will likewise hold to account mission managers. We have had excellent cooperation with some Troop-Contributing Countries, for which I would like to express my warm gratitude. That TCCs and PCCs take urgent remedial action where warranted is essential, because the UN must, of course, not accept peacekeepers who are not committed to upholding UN standards of conduct. As our capacity to address sexual exploitation and abuse improves, the number of cases coming to light will increase. The Department will need your continued commitment to rid UN peacekeeping of these shameful acts, which include the solicitation of prostitutes. I mention this because it is clear that not all personnel have understood this. Please help us get this message across. Distinguished Delegates The cooperation we have had on difficult issues demonstrates the enormous positive impact we can have on peacekeeping. How then, can we jointly address the peacekeeping challenges of the 21 st Century? At the recent World Summit your Heads of State and Government articulated some of the key elements that must be pursued. First, you underscored that peacekeeping is a core activity of the UN. You emphasized that UN peacekeeping must have the capacity to counter hostilities and fulfill effectively its mandates and must be able to respond robustly to challenges on the ground. In particular, you noted the need for a rapidly deployable reserve capacity to reinforce missions in crises. You also endorsed proposals for strengthened police capacities. Second, you reinforced your commitment to a comprehensive integrated approach to post-conflict countries and to the deployment of integrated missions in complex situations. To facilitate coherence across the UN system and the wider global community, you decided to establish a Peacebuilding Commission and a Peacebuilding Support Office by the end of 2005. Third, you reiterated the importance of regional organizations in support of peace activities, including peacekeeping. And you proposed ways in which peacekeeping partnerships between the UN and regional organizations could be strengthened, including through the provision of regional capacities to UN standby arrangements systems. Fourth, you expressed your deep concern at instances of abuse by UN personnel of their position, access and responsibilities. You mandated the Secretary-General to initiate reforms in human resource and financial management practices in the Secretariat so as to enable us to be more effective and accountable to the Membership we serve. How can the Department of Peacekeeping Operations respond to the direction you have set for the Organization and support the Secretary-General's reform efforts? As I see it, we must organize our response around five priorities that reflect your conclusions from the World Summit. As you intended the Summit to set the agenda for the Organization for the foreseeable future, so too, these priorities should shape the direction of work for the Department of Peacekeeping Operations over the next few years. Let me briefly set out what I hope is a faithful reflection of your priority concerns over the past five years and how you wish the Organization, and UN peacekeeping, to go forward. The first priority is People Our Organization rests on the people who constitute it. The Department of Peacekeeping Operations is a hugely decentralized operation with many individuals in the field who bring commitment, experience and skill to UN peacekeeping. They risk their lives on a daily basis. These people, many of them civilian personnel, are peacekeeping professionals. Yet we have not provided them with a professional career structure or service. Civilian peacekeepers have not benefited from basic services such as security provision; training; standards and guidance; attractive conditions of service; mobility across the UN system; and opportunities for advancement. Leadership suffers as result of this lack of investment. At present, we lack a systematic approach to the recruitment and preparation of mission leaders. The more complex our missions have become, and the more difficult their environments, the more demands we put on our mission leaders. We have a responsibility to ensure they are equipped to carry out their tasks. We have already initiated, at your urging, two steps to address this. The first is the creation of a Senior Leadership Induction Programme, or SLIP, to better prepare senior mission officials for their duties. The first so-called SLIP course was held in June this year and is a complement to the Senior Mission Leaders course (STM3) that we again carried out, this time in South Africa , in September. The second step underway is a review of the selection and appointment of senior leaders, which we are undertaking in cooperation with our UN partners. These are only the first steps. Our goal is to put in place a cadre of professional field personnel, supported by responsive and effective leaders. To do this, a fresh approach is needed to the recruitment, preparation and retention of staff. My senior managers and I will take a personal role in making the progress that we believe is possible in this area. This will include a review of the conditions of service and staff mobility across the UN system. A key component of it is increased emphasis on training. We need to train our staff in the core UN business and our standards, as the sexual exploitation and abuse issue has revealed. I will return to the issue of training in a few moments. The second priority is Doctrine The UN has been in the business of peacekeeping for over six decades: the Department of Peacekeeping Operations has existed for well over one. We have yet to capture this experience and systematize it in a consistent, quality-controlled manner. As UN peacekeeping mandates grow, as our personnel increases, and as we engage more and more in partnership with other contributors to peace operations, it is more important than ever that we clearly define and articulate the issues central to UN peacekeeping. Many of the core questions for UN peacekeeping identified in the Brahimi Report remain:
To answer these questions, and elaborate guidance that can assist field personnel carry out these complex tasks, we need to harness our operational experience from diverse missions over the past decades. We can also learn from the experiences of others. At the same time, a UN peacekeeping guidance framework cannot be imported from elsewhere. Nor can it an abstract exercise. Our objective is to elaborate a pragmatic, operational guidance system that reflects the knowledge and experience of UN peacekeepers and helps today's peacekeepers - your personnel - to carry out their tasks effectively and safely. This guidance system, which will have to be elaborated upon in close collaboration with you, will constitute a UN peacekeeping doctrine. With your support, we can build this system. We will need your help in contributing to its development and in preparing your personnel for UN service against emerging doctrine. We have made some progress in developing a basic framework for the guidance system, which we will discuss with you during the forthcoming session of the Special Committee on Peacekeeping Operations. This will complement the discussion on terminology of peacekeeping operations on which we will also engage with you during the session. The third priority is Partnerships One of the key issues in our discussions over the past few years has been integration. With your support, we have made good progress. However, the proposed establishment of the Peacebuilding Commission and the Peacebuilding Support Office will requires renewed drive to build a coherent UN-wide system. This is also one of the Secretary-General's key reform targets. The core of our commitment is in the planning, conduct and support of integrated UN missions. We have already initiated with our partners the first steps to reinforce an integrated approach. I believe it is now time for us to move beyond a focus on 'integration' to a more holistic concept of partnership. We are, together with our UN family - the agencies, funds and programmes - undertaking an interagency review of the Integrated Mission Planning Process which, when completed, will be institutionalized throughout headquarters and in the field. This process is facilitating a dialogue with our UN partners on roles and responsibilities in peace operations and how we can best clarify and share our joint labour. This dialogue will be important in helping to articulate how we could best support the proposed Peacebuilding Commission and Support Office in coordinating strategy, particularly in areas such as the Rule of Law, Security Sector Reform, and DDR. In each of these areas the range of tasks involved, their specialized aspects, and the length of time required to implement them mean that no single organization can single-handedly address these issues. A coordinated approach across the wider system to establish principles and strategies that can guide our planning and conduct of Rule of Law and SSR activities in post-conflict countries is needed. In this regard, we see the good work done in establishing interagency approaches in the field of mine action and DDR as offering helpful ways of approaching this work. Beyond the UN family, we have a wealth of partners that we must cooperate with to maximize our collective efforts in post-conflict countries. Regional organizations, in particular, are key partners for UN peacekeeping. The dramatic growth in regional peacekeeping is welcome. It reflects the global demand for peacekeeping and it is testimony to your commitment to the multilateral management of peace. It also is an illustration that many conflicts are coming to an end. Above all it enables us, through strengthened cooperation, to improve and expand the support that we provide to post-conflict societies. There is no one-size fits all approach to partnerships. Our partners are diverse and we must engage with them according to the focus, resources, and capacities of each. At the same time, we can only maximize the potential of our cooperation through predictable and effective frameworks for partnerships. The priority for the Department of Peacekeeping Operations over the next five years will be to put in place those frameworks. We will invite institutionalized open dialogue with external partners based on three broad goals: first, the promotion of regional capacity for peacekeeping; second the strengthening of effectiveness through targeted capacity-building efforts; and third, the reinforcement of a collective approach to security. Our immediate priority is the partnership with the AU to take forward the Summit endorsement for a 10 year capacity building programme. This effort includes our well-established partnership with the EU as well as those with African sub-regional organizations, ECOWAS and ECCAS, and NATO, all of whom are supporting AU peacekeeping enhancement. A second priority for the Department is the furthering of cooperation in the field with International Financial Institutions, in particular the World Bank, who play a crucial role in enabling a stabilized post-conflict situation to transition into a sustainable economic recovery. The fourth priority of the Department is Organization The reinvigoration of UN peacekeeping in terms of people, doctrine and partnerships requires an organization that can support these capacities and can meet the needs of a global, decentralized Department. We must put in place a structure that provides the field with clear, responsive and accountable direction and support; a structure that is responsive to Member States; and a structure that can engage as an effective partner in integrated peace operations. We are not currently configured to discharge these functions. In the Reports of the Special Committee on Peacekeeping Operations over the past four years, you have expressed strong support for an integrated team approach, as proposed in the Brahimi Report. We are currently reviewing how we can institutionalize an integrated team approach. And our emerging conclusion is that this requires a systematic application across the Department. We are proposing, therefore, to establish fully integrated, cohesive teams to direct and support field operations at Headquarters. These integrated teams will bring together military, police and civilian personnel to provide substantive and support guidance and direction to the field. They will be a single, responsive backstop for a mission. They will expand and contract according to the needs of the mission and they are intended to include the active participation and collocation of UN partners engaged in a particular mission. The configuration of Headquarters, will reflect ongoing efforts to strengthen the organization of our operations in the field. We are currently reviewing mission structures and developing templates that can guide mission planning and effective management. An important component of this is a benchmarking process that will establish organizational structures geared towards mission demands. We will be providing the Special Committee on Peacekeeping Operations with a comprehensive indication of how we can configure the Department and field missions and we look forward to discussing this further with the Committee. All of this brings me to my fifth priority, Resources The priorities I have outlined are ambitious. But let me be clear: this is not a set-up for a request for a staff increase along the lines that followed the issuance of the Brahimi Report. Our goal is not to expand UN peacekeeping structures but to better equip them to support comprehensive mandates in an effective, as well as a resource-efficient way. In most cases, our efforts will focus on internal redeployment of current capacities in Headquarters and in the field. In areas such as personnel, the most important prerequisite for reform is greater flexibility to reallocate and realign existing resources. In some areas, however, additional resources are needed. The first is in relation to operational capacity. At the Summit , your Heads of State and Government endorsed the creation of an initial operating capability for the Standing Police Capacity. The purpose of this capacity is to enable the rapid start up of new UN police operations and to provide police reform capacity building assistance to existing UN police components. Since the request of the Special Committee in March to develop the concept, the Department has collaborated closely with the C34 in elaborating the framework for the Standing Police Capacity. Draft structures, staffing, job descriptions and command and control arrangements have been developed. An indicative budget has been given for a proposed start to implementation in January 2006. Our ability to maintain this solid progress depends on the approval of the relevant legislative bodies of this budget. We ask therefore, your engagement in ensuring consistent support for the initiative in the bodies of the General Assembly. The Department will be updating the Special Committee on Peacekeeping Operations on progress in the Standing Police Capacity in the next session. You also recognized, at the Summit , the need to develop operational capability with regard to capacity to respond to situations of crisis in existing missions. However, you have queried the solution proposed by the Department to this need, namely a UN Strategic Reserve. We are eager to explore with you the full range of feasible and effective options for meeting reserve capacity needs. A C34 working group is currently examining options which will provide the basis for further development of concepts by the Department. The discussions raised to date have underscored your request, last year, for a review of the UN Standby Arrangements System, including in its capacity to support rapid deployable elements. We will pursue this issue with the C34 during the forthcoming session. The second area where some additional resources are required is in supporting the strengthening of our greatest resource, our people. You have repeatedly requested an Integrated Training Service to ensure consistent, thorough training for all military, police and civilian personnel in the field. We are going to implement this as a matter of priority over the next six months. An Integrated Training Service will be one of the most important and lasting contributions to better UN peacekeeping. But to be effective, it must have adequate capacity. While most of the resource requirements will be met by existing capacities in the Department, some additional support will be necessary in the start up phase. Here again, we request your support in translating your longstanding request into operational reality through the legislative process. Taken together, the five priorities of people, doctrine, partnerships, organization and resources are an ambitious agenda. Their implementation will require substantial commitment and cannot deflect us from our primary obligation to support and direct current missions. Nontheless, they represent the priorities you have set for UN peacekeeping over the past five years, priorities your Governments have reinforced at the World Summit. They reflect the reform agenda of the Secretary-General. Above all, they are the steps we collectively need to take to enable UN peacekeeping to better serve the 200 million men, women and children whose lives we can impact in fundamental ways. With your concurrence on the broad lines of this agenda, I will return to the Special Committee for Peacekeeping Operations with a comprehensive implementation agenda for each of these five priorities. The forthcoming report to the C34 will provide details of what we are proposing in each area and we will look forward to discussing them with you during the session's workshops and briefings. Let me conclude here by thanking you for your attention. I look forward to our discussion today and to speaking with you next week when you discuss mine action. |