Remarks by H.E. Mr. Mogens Lykketoft, President of the 70th session of the United Nations General Assembly at Working Together for Peace and Security: Moving from Silos to Synergies
9 May 2016
Good afternoon everyone.
It is great to be here and I have to say I am very excited about what lies ahead of us this week.
First of all, allow me to thank Ambassador Petersen, Ambassador Cardi, the International Peace Institute and all the partners for organizing today’s event.
As you all know, the IPI report that we launch today was informed by a series of regional workshops organised by think tanks, civil society organisations, and individual experts, some of whom are present with us today.
Each of these actors expressed their interest in engaging in an open discussion in advance of the high-level thematic debate on UN, Peace and Security which begins tomorrow.
I admire their sustained engagement and I wish to express my sincere appreciation for their work.
Thanks to them, more than 15 experts meetings took place between January and April in all regions of the world from Brussels to Brasilia, Monrovia to Shanghai and beyond.
Those meetings involved diplomats, civil society, private sector representatives, senior officials from regional organisations such as the AU, the EU, the League of Arab States, and other stakeholders.
They focussed on a wide spectrum of issues relating to the UN’s engagement in matters of peace and security – prevention, mediation, human rights, the role of the military, business and civil society, the implementation of UN policies at the local level in Africa, the Arab World or elsewhere; and the relationship with regional organisations etc.
I am very pleased to see that this IPI report has managed to draw out key conclusions from this overall process, which in many ways addresses the synergies between the most recent UN peace and security reviews.
The report has identified different connectors across the UN’s three pillars which can respond to the many areas of convergence identified by the three reviews, such as on the need to:
- recognize the primacy of politics;
- increase investment in prevention and sustainable peace;
- advance a people centred approach to peace and security
- strengthen partnerships, particularly with regional organizations
- And enhance flexibility in budgetary and management issues.
We have already seen promising developments through the work of relevant UN bodies and committees – including the adoption 10 days ago of landmark Resolutions on peacebuilding by the GA and the Security Council, which brings forward a definition of ‘sustaining peace’ and opens the way to important institutional developments in the near future.
And I look forward to hearing the views from our experts about how those resolutions will be translated into concrete action in the near future.
In addition, the IPI report also alludes to some more fundamental questions that I hope we will see member states and others address at the high level thematic debate.
Questions about how, for example, the UN can address new or emerging threats?
How it can mitigate major geopolitical tensions and maintain its relevance for major powers?
How it can help address and prevent proxy-wars where global and regional power interests are at stake?
In other words, how we can ensure that the UN plays a more credible and relevant political, legal and operational role in maintaining international peace and security?
With your help and that of all those who made such a great contribution to this IPI report, I hope we will move some way to responding to these questions today, tomorrow and Wednesday.
And in doing so, I hope we can also begin to set out a vision and an action oriented roadmap for the next Secretary General on matters of peace and security.
Thank you.