I thank you Mr. Chairman for convening today’s meeting and for an opportunity to share our thoughts. I also thank DSG and Ms. Landgren for their statements and fully agree with them that we need new approaches if we are to make a difference.
I wish to share a few thoughts, essentially from our national perspectives.
The twin resolutions on peacebuilding and sustaining peace adopted in 2016 acknowledged the challenges faced by conflict-affected countries undergoing transitions and the PBC’s role in supporting them. Secretary General’s 2018 Report further consolidated that notion.
The pathway of transition out of crisis to sustain peace and development is a transformative and ambitious agenda. It requires strategic planning, clear objective, sustained and predictable resources, ability to convene both national and multilateral actors, and creating partnership across the board.
We appreciate the Secretary General’s reforms initiatives for encouraging a longer-term strategic vision. We are happy to learn that the new generation of UN country team is having a positive impact on the ground in terms of improved coherence, and operational effectiveness in this regard. And I share Ms. Karin Landgren’s point about the role that the UN agencies, funds and programs can play especially in the post-transition to the recovery phase.
Mr. Chair,
As a leading troop and police contributing country to UN peacekeeping operations, Bangladesh supported UN’s transition efforts in many mission settings. For us, peacebuilding and sustaining peace must hinge on UN’s focus on reform, coherence and prevention. The whole narrative must be duly framed by the overarching notions of national ownership, inclusivity and partnership. To that end, we feel that there are certain critical issues where we need to strive for a common ground and let me briefly highlight them:
First, we need to translate UN’s system wide reforms into concrete deliverables on the ground. For this, we need to ensure multi-stakeholder partnership so that the peace and development pillars can work in a more coherent and synergistic way in the field, particularly during transitions.
Second, we need to further consolidate the notion of transition as a comprehensive goal and process across the entire continuum of conflicts. We need to free up ‘transition’ from its traditional confines of focusing on last few years of drawdown of a peacekeeping mission. The PBC must be proactive in effectively bringing together the three pillars of the organization during the transitional phase of missions.
Third, ensuring enhanced, predictable and sustainable resources for peacebuilding and sustaining peace. The Secretary General in his interim report of May 2019 offered some bold and innovative suggestions including for the PBF. It is now up to us to see if our collective commitment can match up to his ambitions.
Fourth, ensuring a considered and responsive approach to the gender aspects of transitions for women and girls, as well as the youth.
Fifth, developing a framework for systematic collection and analysis of information and good practices from Missions that have successfully transitioned and exited.
All these issues merit further elaborations and discussions. We look forward to working with other member states to advance discussions on these important topics during the ongoing review cycle.
I thank you.