Pakistan calls for addressing root causes of conflicts

UNITED NATIONS: Pakistan has called for identifying and addressing the root causes of disputes in an effort to lay the foundation for sustainable peace and development in states recovering from conflicts. “Experience has shown that the biggest and most ominous gap in peacekeeping and peace-building strategies is the failure to comprehend and address the root causes of conflicts,” Ambassador Munir Akram told the UN Security Council on Tuesday.
Speaking in a debate on post-conflict peace building, he pointed out that the issues of poverty and unemployment and the imperative of socio-economic development have remained largely neglected in plans and strategies.
“Post-conflict challenges in several countries are likely to become further exacerbated by the current global food crisis,” the Pakistan ambassador added.
Peace building, he said, must be part of a comprehensive response to complex crises. The challenge was ensuring coherence and synergy between peacekeeping and peacebuilding activities from the very outset of the United Nations engagement.
Such coherence, the ambassador said, would lead to a smooth transition from peacekeeping to self-sustaining peace and development. The Peace building Commission, along with the Peace building Support Office and Peace building Fund, were the central instruments of the Organization’s peace building activities.
Ambassador Akram said that coherence and integration of peace building activities and the provision of timely, adequate and sustained funding were objectives best promoted by the Commission, since all major stakeholders and partners were represented there.
However, in order to ensure that the task was conducted effectively, the international community should evolve a common strategic vision of peacebuilding, he said.
That required, among other things, a greater convergence of the perspectives of partners and host countries; national ownership and leadership; and involvement of the Peace building Commission from the initial phase.
While it was desirable to empower the respective Special Representatives of the Secretary-General to lead and coordinate peacekeeping and peace building, that should not supplant the authority and role of host Governments, the ambassador stressed.
The goal should be to make effective use of national capacities, and not to take steps to replace them, he said. With that in mind, he called for peace building challenges to be considered in a broader context so that adequate and comprehensive responses could be crafted and fully implemented.