2025 Review of the Peacebuilding Architecture

Thank you for joining today’s joint informal interactive dialogue on the 2025 Review of the Peacebuilding Architecture.

I thank His Excellency Mr. Evangelos C. Sekeris, President of the Security Council, for co-convening this dialogue.

I also thank Her Excellency, Ms. Antje Leendertse, Chair of the Peacebuilding Commission, for co-chairing. 

And their Excellencies Mr. Osama Abdelkhalek and Mr. Samuel Žbogar, co-facilitators of the 2025 Review, for their initiative and collaboration in bringing us together today.

Conflicts are proliferating across the globe—destabilising regions, displacing communities, and claiming innocent lives.

In response, military expenditures are rising, questioning our apparent commitment to use the tools available through the United Nations organization to achieve peace.

Let me be clear, war is not inevitable.

War has proven to be time wasting and the wrong response to conflict. In order to build peace war must stop.

So, we may as well become smarter and eliminate that option from the many options at our disposal.

And use this United Nations Organization as it was first conceived to secure a future of peace and cooperation.

For once and for all. We must all learn to employ peace instead of going out to the battlefield.

Now more than ever, we must turn to the tools of peacebuilding, rooted in the principles and purposes of the United Nations Charter, to secure our future.

We must turn to prevention, to dialogue, to peacebuilding itself.

These are the most powerful tools we possess for resolving conflict and achieving a just and lasting peace.

We laid the foundation for this peacebuilding approach twenty years ago, through the creation of the United Nations Peacebuilding Architecture, comprising:

1. The Peacebuilding Commission,
2. The Peacebuilding Fund, and
3. The Peacebuilding Support Office.

Now is the time to fully draw on the best practices developed since establishing this foundation.

Our aim is to renew our commitment to this indispensable architecture for peace.

In adopting the Pact for the Future last September, world leaders committed to strengthening the Peacebuilding Commission through the 2025 review of the peacebuilding architecture.

The Terms of Reference for the 2025 Review—approved in April 2024—state that, “The review should also be forward-looking, aiming at further improving the work of the UN on peacebuilding and sustaining peace.”

This includes, among other priorities, enhancing collaboration among the Peacebuilding Commission, the Peacebuilding Support Office, and the Peacebuilding Fund.

Today’s meeting offers an opportunity to ensure that the United Nations’ efforts are comprehensive, efficient, and impactful.

It is highly symbolic that today’s informal interactive dialogue is convened jointly by the UN General Assembly and the UN Security Council, together with the Peacebuilding Commission.

A Peacebuilding Commission with a more active bridging role will be better positioned to inform decision-making across all relevant United Nations Organs, including the UN General Assembly, the Security Council, and the Economic and Social Council.

When world leaders established the Peacebuilding Architecture, they understood that Member States bear the primary responsibility for preventing conflict and building peace.

World leaders recognised that national efforts are essential to sustaining peace and fostering international security, and that these efforts require adequate, predictable, and sustained financing.

In recognition of this, world leaders committed to supporting States, including through the Peacebuilding Commission and the wider United Nations system:

• To promote, develop, and implement nationally owned prevention strategies,
• And to address the root causes of violence and conflict, while sharing best practices and lessons learned.

Today’s dialogue certainly reflects that spirit.

I hope today’s interactive dialogue will meaningfully inform the 2025 Peacebuilding Architecture Review.

And, more broadly, help shape how we think about the future of this Organisation as it approaches its 80th anniversary.

Thank you.

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