Madam President,

We are gathered to show our collective commitment to sustaining peace as a goal and a process aimed to reinvigorate the Organization’s mandate for peace as a core principle across the UN system.

The Philippines therefore commends the leadership of the Secretary-General for the launch of the Action for Peace or A4P initiative, lauds the Secretariat for the comprehensive consultations, and recognizes the efforts of the Member States for producing a balanced coherent, concise and strategic political document on the Declaration of Shared Commitments on UN Peacekeeping Operations which was adopted at this afternoon’s opening segment.

The Philippines is ready to enhance its engagement on key UN Peacekeeping Operations as the Philippine Government now allows more deployment of Philippine military and police troops and individual personnel “regardless of the Security Threat Level.” We will continue to work on ensuring that our pledges under the UN Peacekeeping Capability Readiness System (PCRS) are readily deployable. At the same time, we should continue to cooperate for the implementation of the recommendations of the Special Committee on Peacekeeping Operations (C34).

With over 50 years of peacekeeping operations, the Philippines has never faltered in its commitment to answering UN calls for peace and for investment in peace – even as the calls have evolved in a changing world. Thus, we signed the Voluntary Compact against sexual abuse which puts to shame what should be held up in honor – the UN’s peacekeeping mission. We renewed our pledge in the 2^nd Chiefs of Defense Conference to provide more military officers observers and staff; and deploy more women peacekeepers, in the conviction grounded in experience, that the gender that binds the wounds of war, comforts the widows of war, and shelters the children of conflict, have the strongest motivation that the wisest approaches to stop the outbreak of war and restore the peace that is broken.

With ASEAN, we reaffirm peacekeeping as a key element of ASEAN political and security cooperation, highlighted in the Plan of Action to Implement the Comprehensive Partnership between ASEAN and the United Nations. The Philippines is actively engaged with regional peacekeeping activities such as those under the ASEAN Defense Ministers’ Meeting (ADMM), namely the ASEAN Peacekeeping Centres’ Network (APCN) and the ADMM-Plus Experts’ Working Group (EWG) on Peacekeeping Operations.

Madam President,

Allow me to reiterate the Philippines’ recommendations on the five (5) key elements of the A4P initiative under peacebuilding, performance, people, partnership and politics:

• On peacebuilding, the Philippines reiterates its support for UN Security Council resolution 2282 and General Assembly resolutions 70/262 and 72/199 on the review of the peacebuilding architecture which underscored “the importance of prioritizing prevention, addressing the root causes of conflict, and devising long-term peacebuilding strategies, with adequate and sustainable financial resources which are translated to concrete measures at the country level.”
• On performance, the Philippines believes that success in peacekeeping operations must be measured by the mandate to protect civilians as the “core criterion of success,” with child protection and combating sexual abuse as key elements. Pre-deployment training (PDT) efforts should be tailored to respond to particular country-specific challenges of protecting civilians with clear definitions of the responsibilities, opportunities and constraints that will be faced by peacekeepers in the field.
• On people, the Philippines puts equally high priority to ensuring the safety of peacekeepers principally by enhancing the capacity of contributing countries and drawing lessons from their generally satisfactory experience in the field. We therefore commend the Cruz Report and the UN Secretariat’s action plan to address the strategic, fundamental and systemic gaps in UN peace operations. We also emphasize the importance of having updated rules of engagement (ROE) that are attuned to the realities on the ground.
• On partnerships, the Philippines reiterates its support for intergovernmental platforms that enable peer learning among Member States on how to build resilience in peacekeeping and encourages constructive dialogues on the challenges in sustaining peace, while pursuing strategic partnerships. We also support the UN’s continued engagements with regional organizations in terms of joint analysis, planning and information sharing. The Philippines also participates in regional platforms, namely the International Association of Peacekeeping Training Centers (IAPTC) and the Association of Asia-Pacific Peace Operations Training Centers (AAPTC), with the end goal of sharing expertise as well as learning from the experiences of other troop contributing countries.
• On politics, we repeat our support of calls to invest more in local political solutions to conflicts, which UN peacekeeping must reinforce and not supplant. People in conflict situations must feel that they own the peace we merely help to bring about and keep. It is they who must configure the peace and the approaches to it. No one else.

Madam President,

Through the Action for Peacekeeping (A4P) initiative, the Philippines stands in solidarity with the community of responsible nations and remains steadfastly committed to contribute to UN Peacekeeping Operations, cognizant of their strategic contributions to sustaining peace. END