He writes, Ladies and gentlemen, we're going to make a start this evening.
I think it's probably about 11:30 at night.
Where you are, Roger. It's it's 17 01 by UK time.
First of all, a warm welcome to everyone for this first seminar of CCW.
This is a very special seminar because it's a bit of a one off warm piece of Oxford has no events during the course of the year,
but this is the first time that we have had the opportunity to host it and certainly, obviously the first of 20 22.
This event really brings together several different organisations, not just CCW,
but also crick the sense of the resolution of intractable conflicts led by Lord John Aldous and indeed Ox Peace as well,
who I'm delighted that some members of Oxbridge have actually joined us this evening for this call.
Our speaker this evening is actually very distinguished and far too modest, often to admit it.
Political Fairness Officer in the United Nations in the Department of Political Affairs and Peacebuilding,
he's worked on reconciliation in Yunona, on an actual fans in NAMI.
He's been a writer for foreign affairs and the national interest.
Famously, he's also a reformer. He is a great believer in the reform of the United Nations perspective from a young person's point of view,
but also in terms of its organisational management and cultural change as part of a team that looks at that,
particularly in the peace and security area. What Roche has been doing is looking specifically when he first came to set ideas
about narratives and how important narratives are in shaping modern conflicts.
But this evening, [INAUDIBLE] be talking a lot more about the qualities of the character of peacebuilding.
So, Roger, thank you so much for joining us. You.
Thank you so much, Rob, for that kind introduction.
Uh, you know, I hope I'm audible to everyone, and I would very much love to do this presentation in person, but unfortunately even did not permit.
But I'm glad that so many of so many colleagues at Oxford and perhaps elsewhere,
are able to join today, thanks to the fact that it's being done remotely.
I would like to just maybe I hope I can share my screen if you'll permit.
Please tell me if you can seat.
Yes, that's coming up. Yes. Excellent. Thank you.
You know, when Rob suggested that I speak, I was and I had, I came up with this with the phrasing of this topic.
And I told a friend about the topic that I was going to speak on and this friend said,
Really, the U.N. and what exactly does the UN bring to the table?
And my impulsive response was, well, obviously the table so that I, you know, in fact, is something that has I find myself indoctrinated with,
it's something I fervently believe in that the singular contribution of the United Nations to the
cause of peace over the last two and four years has been in bringing the table itself for Bali,
for the police of Peace. But to take a step back and to look at.
Peace itself. You know, the ancient Romans used to believe that the war and peace are Janus like, and it's perhaps fitting, I thought,
since we are in January to reflect on this, how the Romans believed that we moved from war time to peace time.
So it's it's a pretty simple. It's a transition of sorts.
And without attaching too much importance to either, this is indeed a fact of life.
We have. Over generations come to look at war with all we see that war brings out the best and also the worst in us.
We have, at the same time, come to believe that war is an anomaly.
But what if it is not an anomaly? What if he studies the anomaly?
I'm someone who. Believes strongly that in fact, we are if we look at things in the last 20, 25 years in the so-called long peace,
there hasn't been a single year when the world has not seen a war in one geography or another.
So studying peace is indeed a critical need of courage, and just as victory in war is no accident.
Victory in peacemaking. Is not it not, nor is it an accident, nor is it simple.
And this is where the one institution that in which.
The world, the nations of the world have entrusted their fate.
I have hope, which you could say embodies our faith that in the ideal that the suffering of one is the suffering of all and that all of us.
Are bound to try every possible means before taking the violence to resolve disputes,
and that we have a duty in fact towards the generations to come by pursuing the course of peace.
In fact, the preamble of the United Nations starts with these lines to save we the peoples of the world, having determined.
To save succeeding generations from the skulls of our resolve that.
Two schools of thought. And.
For all of my esteemed friends in uniform, I think no one bears the brunt of the combat with the brunt of hostilities more than a soldier.
In fact, you'll probably be able to testify to it the best.
But as a civilian who has also had some experience of living and working in war zones, I can say that war is ugly.
War is a nasty, ugly, absolutely horrid business and discourse that it leaves behind.
Stay with us for generations to come. But the way we understand war is often one of hostilities between our countries.
In fact, when the U.N. was set up, the whole, you know, in the shadow of World War Two,
there was this idea that the U.N. would act as a platform that would reduce the asymmetry of information between states and that member states would
thereafter be bound by the resolutions of the Security Council and therefore
that we would perhaps be closing the curtains on interstate warfare itself.
Now, while that did not happen, as we've seen repeatedly over the last 25 years,
what we did see is that the number of interstate wars as well as somewhere that intensity has.
Reduced. Last year, there wasn't a single major interstate conflict.
I hope I'm not when we're doing something, but there wasn't a single significant interstate conflict that happened in 2021.
In 2020, we had the Armenia Azerbaijan conflict, but they did.
But of course, our newspapers, our TV channels are as a social media was full of pictures of conflict and suffering.
But these were coming from civil wars.
Not so much interstate, but interstate wars. But this distinction is extremely important for the.
Suffering is, of course, the same,
but the approaches that we take towards addressing them towards addressing hostilities and suffering is different when it when it comes to civil wars.
And this is why we have seen that today.
In fact, 70 percent of U.N. peace operations are in fact located in geographies where, which, which have an environment of civil war.
Civil wars are not only. More increasing in incidence now, but they're also lasting longer than ever before.
An average civil war. David Armitage, a very respected expert on this in this on civil wars.
He has calculated civil war the last four times longer than an interstate war.
And what we are seeing now is that these civil wars, whether it is Syria, whether it is Yemen,
whether it is Mali, Somalia, Central African Republic, these have increasingly become the norm.
And what is more distressing is the nature is a characteristic of these civil wars.
We are ever coming to see we have come to see certain developments in the way these wars were fought in the 90s.
For instance, we had the Civil War in Sierra Leone, Liberia and in the Balkans in the 90s.
Now compare that with the ones that we see now, Yemen and Somalia, for instance.
And we see a few major changes.
It's not just in the fact that we see that sometimes the use of air power.
We there was some use of air power in Sri Lanka as well as we remember.
But we see now that even air power has come to a quieter, you know, a different meaning altogether with the use of unmanned aerial vehicles.
We see that. The use of irregular forces was always there.
But what we're now seeing is a case of the use of frankly mercenary groups such as in Mali and, you know, Libya,
we see non-conventional warfare tactics, increased use of IEDs, especially in, for instance, in Mali, Somalia.
The U.N. has in Somalia is the single biggest, single deadliest mission for U.N. peacekeeping anywhere.
And. We are beginning to see that. Somewhere the lines between.
What are perhaps in a civil war or civil war, perhaps that at the start with an insurgency and then, you know, acquired a larger dimensions?
We see that the the lines between the use of terrorist tactics by an insurgent group and.
Terrorist groups actively engaged in a civil war.
Getting blurred and on top of this, we see.
A retail ification of conflict. Which means that any number of actors.
Ah, it's become the cost of undertaking of running in Malaysia, the cost of engaging in conflict has gone down substantially.
And all of this is being fodder. Fuelled through war economies and the advent of people financing.
We've seen this in some theatres along with other forms of illicit economies has made it.
Increasingly difficult for sanctions and embargoes to work,
these mechanisms that the international community had to tamp down on conflict seem are increasingly fragile.
And last but not least, the increasing phenomenon of proxy wars by proxy wars are perhaps as old as warfare itself.
But what we have seen now is that in nations undertaking.
Proxy wars in geographies far beyond their own borders.
And this was a capability that was perhaps available once upon a time, only to not too long ago, in fact, only two major powers.
But now we see regional powers.
And in fact, countries which are perhaps, you know, still large scale importers of arms themselves.
Providing arms to in proxy wars to irregular forces in in a third country.
So this has made proxy wars. These proxy wars, in fact,
have meant that attaining a consensus or attaining any kind of a conclusion to a conflict by
bringing the actors and that the local actors together has become increasingly difficult.
Now, why you mentioned this is because today, in fact, most of the as I mentioned, most of the UN's work is.
In fact, in geographies where we have civil wars, active civil wars, and we see that except perhaps, you know, for peacekeeping operations,
the rest are all actually dedicated to looking at addressing conflicts that are actually at the various stages.
In other words, and this is that they are either they're nowhere close to a resolution.
They are, in fact, if at all they're getting, they're getting exacerbated by the DE.
In 2018, the secretary general aware of this.
Came up with the concept of sustaining peace. This is something that the UN and World Bank work together.
The sustaining peace is is a concept which involves the prevention of conflict at various phases.
Whether it is outbreak, the continuation, the escalation or recurrence.
Now, if you'll pardon my childlike scribble across the screen, this arrow,
which is meant to show how there is no it's hardly a straight line from our outbreak to recurrence, as you know.
And at each stage the UN has tried to create.
A mechanisms to address each phase of a conflict, for instance, the UN now increasingly uses preventive diplomacy,
which is a way off, which is often carried out behind the scenes, as some of you are aware we do.
There is a standby mediation team, a team of experts at that the Secretary-General can tap into at a moment's notice and at any point in time.
And we see and I'll come to how we observe and monitor conflicts when we see that there is a conflict in the offing.
The standby team is put into is activated and they work together with the UN civil service in
in addressing the conflict before it escalates to a point where active hostilities even start.
Similarly. When it comes to when conflicts escalate to a level where they require active intervention,
the secretary general employs a variety of tools that just come through.
And when? It looks like there are certain conflicts that are perhaps over, but not quite over,
because sometimes conflicts as we know of go through tend to become chronic and they and it is very important
to address the root causes of conflict in society and to prevent these cycles of conflict from continuing.
And in such cases, there is need, especially when perhaps international aid is not so forthcoming.
There is need for active investment and to ensure development and to in such a direct in a directed way so as to prevent recurrence of conflict.
And that's where the UN's Peacebuilding Commission and the Peacebuilding Support Office, their services are called in.
The UN has something called the Peacebuilding Fund, in fact, which addresses a very rich puts and substantive amount of money through civil society,
in particular in geographies which are fragile, which are just in the process of recovering from a conflict.
Everyone knows about blue helmets.
The UN is almost synonymous when they when anyone talks about the U.N. and peace operations, the first word that people think about is peacekeeping.
So that's so I will not go too much into peacekeeping, but I'd like to talk about peacemaking without the peacekeeping.
Peacekeeping is, in fact, increasingly not the norm.
The Security Council over the last 20 years has become increasingly reluctant to authorise large footprint peacekeeping operations.
In fact, I think Mali was MINUSMA in Mali was probably the last big peacekeeping operation with Blue Helmets that was authorised.
Instead, what the U.N. is, what the Security Council is increasingly inclined to use to do low footprint missions.
Now these low footprint peace operations, are they, of course, you know, they impose the cost less.
They are easy to mobilise. They're quick to deploy.
But they of course increase. They impose a pretty heavy burden.
In fact, the burden of expectations is probably the biggest on the UN secretariat.
And the secretariat on the instructions of the secretary general can deploy.
A range of, in fact, goes to the secretary general with a range of options to address a conflict.
For instance, bustle on voice, there are cases where the Security Council, for one reason or another, has not put a conflict on its agenda.
Perhaps there is no consensus in the Security Council.
Perhaps a conflict is not considered to be at a stage where it merits the Security Council's active interest.
And at the same time, it is a it is perhaps a conflict of concern and therefore the secretary general has the
capacity to deploy a personal online without needing to go to go to the Security Council.
Similarly, there are special advisers.
For instance, the secretary general has a special adviser on Africa who broadly monitors conflicts across Africa and.
Effectively exercises the secretary general's good offices in building trust between member states across the African continent.
Then there are special envoys. And there is the there's a high representative as well, for instance, the.
There is a high representative for landlocked,
least developing and island states who report to the secretary general because this in the era of climate change.
Island states, landlocked countries are seen to have the All-Seeing or all seem to have their all making common cause.
They even work together in the General Assembly often and therefore there is in fact even something called the Air Force,
says the forum of small states. Countries with populations less than 10 million,
they all tend to in fact work together on many issues of the General Assembly and
therefore a representative who engages with them and gives the secretary general informed.
This high representative and there are special envoys the special envoys have increasingly become are becoming increasingly common.
There is a special envoy, for instance, for Yemen, and there's a special envoy on Syria.
A special envoy is someone who typically does not have to.
He can only she can. She focuses exclusively on the peace and security issues related to that particular theatre and
does not have to say oversee the operations of the UN agencies in the country such as UNICEF,
W.H.O., UNDP, etc.
There are special representatives, these are.
Officials at the under secretary general level were appointed by the secretary general to the public in a very broad,
all encompassing view of a conflict. And now this look like bureaucratic titles, but each title actually carries with it a certain weight,
as well as a certain scope of responsibility and especially representatives also not only have to look at the peace and security dimension,
but also to look at the developmental dimension and then look at the intersection of peace and development in a certain country.
So, for instance, in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, we have special representatives now.
There are special representatives in some countries that also have special political missions Afghanistan and Iraq.
Being along being classic examples, especially political mission, is quite similar to an embassy.
Except that, of course, it does not represent any particular any one member States' interests or positions.
A special political mission has, you could say, a broadly two rules one.
In fact, it acts as an interface. I'll say it's two roles are two.
Functions are to translate the Security Council's mandate and to put it into action.
For instance, the Security Council has a mandate of protection of civilians. Then,
when the special political mission in the Country X will work with all the security actors and
perhaps even non-state actors to ensure that civilians are protected in the course of the conflict.
At the same time, the special political missions has a function of representing the people of the country through the Security Council.
So whenever there's a Security Council mandate for an SPM, as we say, there is.
The Security Council calls for a brief every three months,
every six months by the special representative heading the SPM on what is a status, what exactly is going on in the country.
Do we see the conflict, especially in the fog of war?
It's hard to ascertain whether the conflict intensity has increased or and who is responsible for, say, much of the violence.
So these kind of very nuanced reading readings are actually done through these three monthly or six monthly briefs by the special representatives.
Heading ISPs in parallel are what we see.
Our special rapporteurs were typically appointed by the UN Human Rights Council, which, as you know, is not in the U.N. charter.
It was not originally the U.N. charter, but ever since it was set up in the 90s, it has been a useful forum.
It does not have.
The UN Human Rights Council does not include the entire membership of the U.N. and at the same time, it's become a very important organ of the UN in,
especially in formulation of international human rights law and special rapporteurs
are independent of the work independently and to keep the Secretary-General informed.
There's a special rapporteur, for example, on freedom of speech. There's a special rapporteur on freedom for practise of religion.
So there is these kind of officials.
They look at different dimensions of a conflict.
And this is this is one value that the UN brings to the table in the sense that there, even if individual member states have, let's say, you know,
they have ministers and tied ministries and, you know, looking at it, excuse me, addressing various dimensions of the conflict and trying to say,
for example, there are countries such as Norway that how active mediation teams are and yet not not many are able
to summon the kind of bandwidth the UN has in addressing the and all the dimensions to a conflict,
for instance. So there are take you take any conflict that is raging in the world and any civil war that we see today.
And you will see that apart from those who are working on the peace and security dimensions there,
there is a special envoy, special rapporteur who is working on children in armed conflict.
There is a special envoy who is looking at the role of sexual violence in conflict,
and therefore this ensures that no Weiss's are lost and that every a the voice of the people in
the conflict consistently and makes it is consistently heard by the international community.
No. That's it. The challenges to peace are indeed manifold, and they are multiplying as we speak terrorism,
we already I'd mentioned and also but violent extremism and.
Many people, in fact, talk.
Of these two terms, perhaps together, in fact, even the UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy speaks of violent extremism conducive to terrorism.
But I separate this for a reason because what we're seeing today is is the rise of intolerance,
which perhaps falls short of actively procuring explosives and wanting to attack people who disagree with you.
But the question is no less violent and no less dangerous to our societies.
Whether it is right wing extremism, whether it is the now we're even talking about the talk of intolerance on the grounds of fear for environmental,
on the basis of environmental arguments. There is, and we have become.
A world community where intolerance has foundered.
Quite easy to proliferate, and perhaps it is the internet to blame, perhaps it is just the side geist of our times.
But perhaps it's it. It is. It's just it is a reality that we are less willing to even look into the arguments of those that we disagree with.
But violent extremism in particular has created the schisms in society.
And that's where the UN has been working on social cohesion programming.
This means that especially where you have majoritarianism on the rise, for instance,
you cannot address it as an issue of anti-terrorism if you have the majority believing that a minority is is dominating and
therefore that or that if there are a majority impulses in the society or if there is an apartheid like environment be developing,
then in such cases what you need is social cohesion programming.
It's again, something that sounds very uneasy when we put it.
But at the grassroots level, a lot of work has been done by the UN in fostering trust between communities,
in creating champions individuals who can act as agents of harmony within their community,
who can assure the members of their community that, you know, let's give the benefit of doubt.
Let's take a step back. Let's act with empathy towards these other communities.
So. Similarly, we have this issue.
Of. Information warfare, we have that it goes without saying fake news.
Now this is where the UN has in fact, the U.N. is trying to find solutions to this issue, to this challenge.
I don't think we yet did. But we are.
In fact, the Secretary-General tweeted just last week about any time you see a piece of news, ask Who is it by?
Where is it from? What could be the intent? So in other words, the critical reason?
With Everett, in the case of every bit of news or information that that we come across,
and this is something that we are trying to address through education through,
for instance, through unicycle and and and also through the US own strategic communications apparatus.
Climate security, it's not something that is on which there is a consensus, whether climate change is a peace and security issue,
but many people would say yes, the desertification of the Lake Chad basin.
In fact, there's a U.N. fund for four specifically on this and to which many member states have contributed.
And the desertification of Lake Chad has indeed given rise to enormous instability in West Africa and two waves of migration to go to Europe.
And yet there is a fear amongst some member states that climate change is would it be used, perhaps or misused,
say such in a manner similar to say right, right to protect in order to justify interventions in?
In other member states, so clearly, there is quite a huge gap.
There is a lot of mistrust on. On this issue, and even as we are face to face with the threat of climate change,
there is a very recently the Security Council did not find consensus and including climate change on the agenda of the Security Council.
So the UN civil service, for its on its part, is, however,
studying this dimension actively and I personally have seen how climate change has contributed to a rise in,
for instance, into tribal conflict in the south of Iraq and in many parts of the Middle East in particular.
Cybersecurity is an issue that is that matters a lot for member states in the U.S.
Like there's there's often a please don't quote me on this, but we like to believe that, you know, it's part of being an, you know, an open society.
The price you pay for it is that it's very hard to lock information up.
And yet cyber security and the toll that it can take on societies is something the U.N. is looking into.
The secretary general has a new envoy on data.
There's a special envoy for and the and the data strategy and who's role amongst whose mandate is also to look into the dimensions of cybersecurity.
Now. One of the key issues is that we see today is rising inequality inequalities, perhaps at the bottom of most of the conflict in the world.
It has been so for centuries. But for the U.N., this means that you cannot simply fix the conflict by merely bringing, you know,
parties to the leaders of their political parties together and sitting them on the table and getting an agreement signed.
In fact, you need to look at, you know, much deeper. And that's where we are now actively in two political economy monitoring.
For instance, we have a group that looks at oil, the prices of the the price of oil and what that says.
We are actively monitoring the price of oil and to see what impact it would
make on countries that are both major producers as well as major consumers.
The as part of the Secretary-General's reforms in 2019, a role of chief economic adviser was created.
The undersecretary general for economic and social affairs is going to be called his chief economic adviser to the secretary general.
And this means that. Besides the World Bank and the IMF,
the secretary general has direct access to it do to forecasting in a way of where the global political economic trends are going and.
Quite important is the creation of the new resident coordinator system there for the longest time without a Security Council mandate,
it's it was impossible for the UN and justifiably so for reasons of sovereignty.
But you will study what is happening in the country. Yes, there is some kind of passive monitoring, but not more than that.
And it's very hard especially to communicate to a government, to you to say that, you know, perhaps the government may want to reconsider a certain,
you know, move or a certain movie, a certain piece of legislation and so on now without actually intervening or in any country's democratic processes.
The secretary general and we shared the creation of the resident coordinator system, the resident coordinator, this role that existed for a while,
but now it has come in a in a in a very empowered as an empowered role and a resident coordinator in about 40 or
countries that they understand coordinator who sits at the top of the pyramid of all the UN institutions in the country,
all the UN agencies and this resident coordinator reported directly to the secretary general.
So effectively, it's the closest thing that the U.N. would have would come to have to having an ambassador in each country.
Now, of course, it's not there in every country in the world, but in about 40 odd countries where there is there is increasing facility,
or perhaps there is some kind of there are cycles of conflict.
There is this AC system exists and along with the ask, each of the resident coordinators, has a peace and development adviser.
And this is also there in 44 countries who who looks at the who looks at not
just about a very broadly about how the peace and security in the country is,
but also about how the developmental trends in the country are likely to affect the peace and security situation.
And these business development advisers, in some cases,
the roles of peace and development specialists who advise the resident coordinators thus act as,
quite frankly, has eyes and views, you know, and in some cases,
hands for the Secretary-General to to address conflicts before they even erupt and irregular responses by
states to non-conventional threats over something that that that's a major concern for for the U.N. today.
This means the setting up of, for instance, of militias which perhaps seem to work in the Short-Term,
but in the medium term that become a problem in themselves.
So this is an area where the UN's DDR and necessary as you call them, disarmament, demobilisation reintegration and security sector reform.
These two mechanisms, which were in their heyday in the 90s, were actively used to demobilise, for instance, rebel groups in West Africa and so on.
Today we're having to act, you know, completely.
Look at, you know, overhaul them, regrouped them so that we addressed this, the issue of these militias,
so that we also are able to make these functions work in an environment where you have active terrorist groups.
So we have a new acronym that are dealing with which, which is armed by armed groups that are classified as terrorist actors.
So it's it's a it's a complicated acronym, but it's essentially in how do we deal, for instance, with al-Shabab?
And how do we make sure that groups that are sanctioned that are part of U.N. sanctions lists?
And yet which are perhaps active insurgent, active insurgent insurgent groups in a country?
How do we deal with them? How do we demobilise them? These are issues that the U.N. is increasingly concerned about and sees to it.
And. Of course, the most important I would say.
You could say walk in of you and thinking about technology has no dawn and that
it's a need that the emphasis on innovation in the UN now is is quite high.
And this is not just so much about the because it the UN has come from the Dr. Strangelove era, perhaps the Steve Jobs era,
but it's actually the key to the cognition of the fact that peacemaking today
requires the proactive use of technology and in ways that we do not imagine before.
And that's where whether it's artificial intelligence and use of machine learning to give you one example that
we use about one year ago when we were looking at Mosul and we wanted the after the liberation of Mosul,
we wanted the Security Council to vote on resolutions for the reconstruction of the city.
And one of our teams, some of our colleagues, went to Mosul and the the video took place.
And basically, we created a virtual reality programme as an augmented reality programme for the members of the
Security Council so that they could see what it feels like for an average citizen in the city.
And this has these kind of innovations have made a significant difference.
We similarly, when it comes to elections in which the UN plays a key role in many countries, the UN is called upon sometimes to monitor elections,
but quite often, but almost always to support a technical assistance to support a member state electoral commission in these kind of cases.
So we are increasingly using technology to make sure that the processes are as fair and free as possible,
whether it is through setting up of a network called 1:2 in Kenya after the legitimate elections in 2010,
which allowed for people to report on electoral malpractices almost in real time.
Now, similarly, in behavioural insights, when it comes to preventing violent extremism, the the UN and the UN Office of Counter-Terrorism is using.
It has in fact set up a centre in Doha to to study how behaviour bureau incites what they may see.
But it comes violent extremism. Our predictive analytics and foresight, all of this and the as well as futures insight.
This is all part of our efforts to improve the early warning for you and senior management.
We have various mechanisms for risk management reviews through which all of UN insights on a certain region of the world are.
They are combined and filtered and analysed.
And while it's it's quite a mammoth process, the insights are quite valuable.
And these this, I believe, has helped us in, you know, in taking a more scientific approach to peacemaking so that when especially blown noise,
especially president of the of the general, we go now and sit with a activist in a conflict.
They're not, you know, working merely on the basis of what has been told to them in the previous meeting on what's reported in the media.
But they're actually going armed with a wealth of information and insight.
I would like to leave the rest for question and answer,
but I hope this has given you a little bit of insight into how the UN is keeping pace with the changing characteristics.
As warfare has changed, so too has the need.
So, so too has peacemaking, and the UN has increasingly come to see this and is trying to keep pace with these changes in peacemaking.
Thank you. Roger Roger Superbowl, it was nice that you've ended by bringing together both matters to do with peacemaking,
but with also the character of conflict because there was no joke made by a peace
mediator that those studying peace are really actually having to study war.
And those so-called war studies, people are always interested in peace, something that's broadly correct.