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Remarks by Ambassador Dai Bing at the UN General Assembly High-level Meeting on Peacebuilding Financing

2022-04-27 19:00

Mr. President,

The UN peace building architecture was established pursuant to the 2005 twin resolutions of the General Assembly and the Security Council. Thanks for the synergy of efforts from all parties, peacebuilding has evolved into an important cross-cutting work within the UN system, and the peacebuilding fund has been instrumental in helping the countries concerned reinforce the foundation of sustained peace.

The risks and challenges faced in the world are emerging thick and fast, placing mounting expectations on peacebuilding work, which is at the same time hamstrung by gaping resource shortfalls. This event offers an important opportunity for exploring ways to provide adequate, predictable, and sustainable peacebuilding financing to fortify and improve that peacebuilding architecture as a whole. China would like to make the following points.

First, development should continue to be prioritized on the peacebuilding agenda. Sustainable development is the basis of lasting peace. This is an underlying notion inherent to the UN peacebuilding architecture. Supporting the comprehensive development of the countries concerned is central to the peacebuilding process, around which peacebuilding activities can be planned, strategic objectives specified, and the UN inter-agency resources mobilized, to create strong synergy. It must be acknowledged that the existing peacebuilding fund-supported projects do not pay enough attention to sustainable development. More of the peacebuilding resources should be channeled into areas where the urgent needs exist for developing countries, including, inter alia, poverty eradication, infrastructure, education, health, and vocational skills training.

Second, peacebuilding financing should be both a fundraising and a cost-cutting exercise to mobilize resources. Channels of peacebuilding financing should be diversify through innovative partnerships. That means greater cooperation with international and regional organizations, international financial institutions, the recipient governments, and the private sector to mobilize more flexible and available funds. To cut costs, it is important to match resource allocation to specific needs with greater precision, and avoid duplication and waste. In addition to the peacebuilding fund, a number of UN special political missions and peacekeeping operations also have peacebuilding mandates that are funded through UN-assessed contributions or peacekeeping assessments. The peacebuilding fund-supported projects should be distinguished from the peacebuilding mandates already undertaken by those field missions. The peacebuilding fund should refrain from duplicating the support already in place for the missions’ peacebuilding work.

Third, traditional donors should continue to show the primary responsibility for peacebuilding financing. Developing countries are struggling in the face of grim challenges, many of which are legacies from the past. Developed countries have a moral obligation to help them develop faster. Any adjustments to or innovation in the peacebuilding financing modalities must not alter the voluntary nature of the peacebuilding fund as defined in the twin resolutions. Nor should the changed modalities pare down that historical responsibility of developed countries as primary contributors. 

Fourth, the peacebuilding fund governance reform should be considered in the course of reforming the financing modalities. The question of financing is a subset of the question of governance. We look forward to greater transparency of the fund and its compliance with the highest standards of accountability and performance, with a greater say for the donors and, in particular, the recipient developing countries vis-à-vis the fund. The lack of effective participation of member states in the management of the fund and the practice of supporting the fund with assessed contributions are inconsistent with the UN budgetary and financial rules.

Mr. President,

China is highly committed to peacebuilding work. We have been actively supporting the nation-building and development efforts of developing countries through multilateral and bilateral channels, and have made multiple tranches of contributions to the peacebuilding fund. The China-UN Peace and Development Fund, established in 2015, has provided funding support to many peacebuilding projects. China looks forward to agreeing on some fair, reasonable, pragmatic, and feasible ideas and horizons to ramp up peacebuilding financing and optimize the peacebuilding architecture on the basis of our discussions at this high-level meeting.

Thank you, Mr. President.


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