Peacebuilding of the Future: The Challenges

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DR. RADHIKA COOMARASWAMY on 06/28/2016

Keynote Address at the Peace Building Commission, Annual Session 2016

Hon. Chairperson
Hon. Secretary General
Your Excellences
Ladies and Gentlemen,

INTRODUCTION

Transitions are periods of potential danger in a nation’s history. They are moments when we can move forward or moments where we may slip back into cycles of perpetual violence. They are interregnums where we must act with caution and wisdom. The nation state should take the lead but the international community, especially the Peacebuilding Commission, has an important role to play.

When the Department of Peace building asked me to give the keynote speech here today, I realized that they were sending a signal, For the most part of the last fifty years the United Nations, its agencies and their departments have had their policies and programmed framed by the wars in Africa- with Liberia and Sierra Leone being the ultimate prototype. Today, there is a greater realization that the devastating wars are now being fought in West Asia and in South Asia and until recently in my own country Sri Lanka. The experience of these wars of recent years, especially after 2001, must fundamentally challenge how we look at war and therefore, how we look at peace building.

The most dramatic changes to take place since the great African wars of the 1990s have been the technologies of war.  Unmanned and manned killing machines that can create extensive damage, acts of “terror” by increasingly brutal non state actors, extensive surveillance through the collection of meta data and personal attacks of human rights defenders using the media and cyber attacks has increasingly characterizes modern warfare in the new theatres of conflict.  In addition new and porous judicial doctrines like the theory of “human shields” to justify attacks on civilian populations remain deeply problematic. Massive refugee flows and the inevitable humanitarian consequences also remain an important part of this scenario. Many of these conflicts are now in Asia. However the United Nations from the Security Council to United Nations departments remain wedded to the old ideas of war and therefore to out of date ideas of peace building. It is important that the United Nations, as an institution come to terms with the unfolding reality around us and that we collectively respond to the crisis that many countries face.

PARADIGM CREATION

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