Thursday, 26 January 2023
Presenter:
H.E. Satyendra Prasad
Location:
New York
DSG Mohammed
Mr President
Excellencies
- I have the honour of addressing this council on behalf of the members of the Pacific Islands Forum with presence at the United Nations. We thank you for convening this open debate on Peacebuilding and Sustaining Peace.
- The Pacific Islands Forum is a strong supporter of UN peacebuilding efforts. We believe in the potential for peacebuilding to enhance political dialogues, assist in conflict prevention and resolution and to allow countries to strengthen their peace dividends.
- As we seek to evolve and strengthen the Security Council’s work on peacebuilding in the 21st Century we must understand and incorporate contemporary threats to international peace and security, including food insecurity, pandemic diseases and climate change among others.
- PIF leaders have recognised climate change as the single greatest threat to the wellbeing, security and livelihoods of Pacific peoples. We have accordingly declared a climate emergency in our region at our most recent PIF leaders meeting. We also reiterate our call to appoint a Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Climate Change and Security, who would inform the work of both the Council and the General Assembly.
- Our region understands the cross-cutting and force-multiplying nature of the climate threat, which already undermines Pacific health, food security, development goals, disaster resilience, COVID-19 pandemic recovery efforts, territorial integrity and social cohesion.
- Building and sustaining peace as a region, with the support from our international partners, is integral to Pacific security and development aspirations as we face this climate emergency. These aspirations have been captured in our recently endorsed 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent.
- As outlined in the 2050 Strategy, peace is not left to governments alone in our region. Building and maintaining peace is a whole-of-community, whole of village, whole of island responsibility. Peacebuilding is supported by civil society, faith-based and other non-governmental organisations which ensure safety and security at the community level.
- No single state in the Pacific is left alone in their efforts to maintain peace and stability. We work together, as one Pacific family, to support each other through difficult times, guided by regional declarations such as the Aitutaki Declaration, the Biketawa Declaration and the Boe Declaration on Regional Security.
- In the Blue Pacific we have also seen first-hand the importance of initiatives such as the Peacebuilding Fund’s climate security project, implemented in conjunction with UNDP and IOM and national partners Kiribati, Tuvalu and the Marshall Islands. This project has been key to enabling our region to build a more inclusive understanding around climate security and to find community solutions to the climate crisis facing our Pacific Island nations.
- We look forward to seeing such initiatives expanded in our region and the resulting knowledge, data and analytics used to inform peacebuilding efforts through this Council and the wider UN system.
- Inclusivity is key to ensuring peacebuilding dividends are sustainable in the long-term. We support peacebuilding investment that seeks to promote societal resilience through the empowerment of women, youth, the disabled and marginalised groups.
- In closing, there are some among us that believe that the absence of human-to-human conflict negates the need to dedicate resources to building peace. That is not a belief we in the Pacific share.
- In our region, long-lasting peace is being built now, bit by bit, through partnerships among our Pacific family and beyond. We are working together to build resilient communities, guided by our Framework for Resilient Development in the Pacific. The relative absence of human-to-human conflict in our region can be seen as testament to the success of our Pacific way of building and maintaining peace.
- We encourage this Council to further interact with non-Council members and other UN bodies to further the cause of peacebuilding in this new era. We encourage all members of the Security Council and Peacebuilding Commission to engage in the fight against climate change with the same fervour and the same resourcing as we engage in traditional, nation-state security efforts. We welcome the Peacebuilding Commission’s facilitation of dialogue between different groups on the nexus between peace and security, development and humanitarian action and urge such facilitation to continue.
- We must also invest in prevention and peacebuilding activities under the Secretary-General’s New Agenda for Peace and look forward to the high-level, multi-stakeholder ‘Summit of the Future’ later this year.
- Excellencies, there is no nation-state security without human security, and there is no human security without a safe, stable climate. We call on all member states to join us in carrying forward this important work.
- I thank you.