EU Statement – UN Security Council: Integrating Effective Resilience-Building in Peace Operations for Sustainable Peace

 - As delivered -

Thank you Madam President,

First, let me congratulate Ghana on assuming the presidency of the Security Council for the month of November. Madam President, we welcome this open debate on how to better equip Peace Operations to address the underlying causes of conflict and promote Sustainable Peace.

I have the honour to deliver this statement on behalf of the EU and its Member States.

The Candidate Countries North Macedonia*, Montenegro^*, Serbia^*, Albania^*, Ukraine and the Republic of Moldova, the country of the Stabilisation and Association Process and potential candidate Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as Georgia align themselves with this statement.

Madam President,

The European Union and the United Nations enjoy a close strategic partnership on peace operations and crisis management dating back two decades. Today, 13 out of the 18 EU missions and operations around the world work side by side with UN missions, for example in the Central African Republic, in Somalia, in Libya and in Iraq.

Promoting a holistic approach to conflict prevention and crisis management is an essential element of the EU’s foreign and security policy. The support to dialogue, reconciliation and mediation of agreements to end violent conflict are demonstrated best practises to address conflicts. However, building resilient peace means looking beyond peace agreements and taking into account long-term reconciliation, social cohesion, institution building, respect for human rights and economic development. It also means continuously working on the underlying roots of conflict such as climate change, food insecurity, inequality and fragile governance.

In the Sahel, the UN, supported by the EU, is promoting stability and peace through a range of actions focussing on peacebuilding, dialogue, mediation and stabilisation.  An example of this is the UNDP-led and EU-funded Stabilization Facility for the Liptako-Gourma region, that supports the establishment of state authority and delivery of essential services. In West Africa, the EU is also focusing on conflict prevention with a multi-country "arc of stability" action of 17 million Euros to address the risks of contagion of the Sahelian crisis on the coastal countries Ivory Coast, Senegal, Guinea, Ghana, Togo and Benin.

Working as One UN and across the Humanitarian-Development-Peace Nexus is essential to ensure a coherent strategy in support of breaking the vicious cycles of conflict. To this end, the EU pledging conferences on the Horn of Africa and the Sahel successfully brought together humanitarian, development and peace instruments and actors ensuring a comprehensive response to this crisis. Another example is project Frexus on Improving security and climate resilience in a fragile context through the Water-Energy-Food Security Nexus in Niger River basin and Lake Chad Basin, which is co-funded by the EU with 4 million euros.

Madam President,

The Women, Peace and Security and Youth, Peace and Security agendas are mainstreamed across our EU-UN joint priorities. The EU promotes gender mainstreaming, and the participation of women in conflict prevention as much as in conflict response and recovery. A good example of how this can be built into prevention measures is the Liptako-Gourma Stabilization Facility which emphasizes the role of women in generating and sustaining livelihoods, an important factor in relaunching local economies.

The recent Youth Action Plan in the EU External Action aims to strengthen engagement with young people worldwide and will contribute to the implementation of the UN Youth, Peace and Security Agenda. Among other actions, the EU will incorporate the Youth Peace and Security dimension into conflict prevention and crisis management efforts.

Madam President,

The Security Council must be informed by and work in sync with UN country offices and organizations specializing in conflict prevention and sustaining peace. A good example of tapping into the expertise of UN agencies is the Climate and Security Mechanism which brings together the conflict prevention and early warning expertise of DPO and DPPA with the climate mitigation and adaptation expertise of UNDP as well as UNEP. The establishment of the Informal Expert Group of Members of the Security Council on Climate and Security is also an important example of connecting the Security Council to other organs of the UN in order to better address the emerging threat of climate and security.

The EU and its member states support many of the UN bodies that focus on various aspects of peacebuilding and sustaining peace, including the Standby Mediation Team, the Peace and Development advisors and the UN Peacebuilding Fund. These are only some of the many valuable aspects of the UN’s conflict prevention and sustaining peace architecture. There clearly is a need for a strengthened and more coherent approach to peace and security. We fully support an ambitious ‘New Agenda for Peace’ as proposed by the UN Secretary-General. We look forward to contribute and engage in a global conversation on this important initiative in the coming months.

Finally, Madam President,

As always, sustainable funding is a key part of the puzzle. Since 2004, the EU has provided some 3 billion euros in support of African-led peace and security operations on the continent. We are and will remain heavily engaged politically and financially as demonstrated by the recent adoption of a EUR 600 million package in support of the African Union’s mandated peace and security operations in the continent, for the period 2022-24. The EU has 11 training and capacity-building missions across Africa, providing training to over 30,000 African soldiers, police officers and magistrates. The European Peace Facility is now up and running. It has already adopted several support measures for African countries and has more in the pipeline. In all these efforts, we encourage cohesion with peacebuilding and stabilization efforts of African sub-regional organizations and initiatives, such as SADC, ECOWAS or the Accra Initiative.

The EU and its Member States are among the biggest contributors to the UN Peacebuilding Fund, providing more than 60% of the funding to this mechanism. We do however recognize the gap between demand and available resources of the Peacebuilding Fund and peacebuilding efforts at large.

We therefore welcome the consensual adoption of the General Assembly Resolution on “Financing for Peacebuilding” facilitated by Kenya and Sweden which sends a strong signal about the shared commitment of all UN Member States to peacebuilding. We now need to match this political signal with adequate and concrete financial commitments, and we look forward to a positive outcome in the fifth committee in this regard, in addition to other forms of support to peacebuilding by the UN membership as a whole. More broadly, the EU is committed to creating more sustainability and predictability in the funding of peace operations. At the EU-AU Summit earlier this year, the European Union and the African Union committed to continue our support to African-led Peace Support Operations and to the on-going discussions to use UN assessed contributions for operations authorized by the UN Security Council.

I thank you.

* North Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Albania continue to be part of the Stabilisation and Association Process.