Chair,
Norway welcomes this opportunity to discuss the status of UN's Special Political Missions. Preventing and resolving armed conflict and sustaining peace should be the United Nations' top priority.
The need for SPMs has been increasing over the last decade because they are effective in the field at a low cost. If we fail to support them properly, the alternative will often be large scale peace operations and large scale humanitarian responses. We are convinced that a solid foundation for funding and backstopping such missions would only save, not increase, UN spending. It is also our common responsibility to secure that SPMs can operate under suitable and flexible mandates.
We need to look at the Special Political Missions as part of a spectrum of peace operations. SPMs play an important role in the UN’s engagement in transitions, and the UN should increase the focus on how to link development issues to peace and security.
We are encouraged by the focus on more coordination and interaction between SPMs and the Peacebuilding Commission. We welcome the increased attention to climate change as a driver of conflict and preventive measures to meet these challenges.
We embrace the concept of sustaining peace, as outlined in the 2016 twin resolutions. We need to intensify our efforts to implement it. There is a variety of avenues to pursue in this regard. One of them is the upcoming review in 2020 of the peacebuilding architecture. To our mind, we should build on the exciting work done in review processes and reports, and take this opportunity to further the sustaining peace agenda.
Thank you.