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Event on Civil Society and Regional Organizations as Key Actors in UN Peace and Security Processes

May 11, 2016

International IDEA’s New York office will hold an event today on better coordination of partnerships between regional organizations and civil society in enhancing United Nations (UN) work on peace and security. The event, entitled “Beyond the UN Peace and Security Architecture: How can Enhanced Cooperation with Civil Society and Regional Organizations Help the UN to Fulfill its Purpose?”, is a side event to a two-day dialogue on the future of the UN’s peace and security architecture.

The year 2015 was pivotal for the UN in taking stock of peace processes and how it enhances security across the world. Three significant UN reviews took place: the UN Peace Operations review, the Peacebuilding Architecture review and the Global Study on the Implementation of Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security. Building on the lessons learned from these reports, the President of the UN General Assembly, Mogens Lykketoft, decided to hold a high-level debate entitled “In a World of Risks: A New Commitment for Peace”.

This side-event to the debate is organized by IDEA and the Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict (GPPAC) and sponsored by the Permanent Mission of the Republic of Korea to the UN, the UN Non-Governmental Liaison Service (UN-NGLS) and the Africa Center for the Constructive Resolution of Disputes (ACCORD). In addition to the three institutional reviews, it comes on the heels of several Security Council and General Assembly resolutions on the need for the inclusion of regional organizations and civil society actors in peace and security institutions at all levels.

Topics to be covered include possibilities for global-regional strategic partnerships; mechanisms for determining the appropriate scales of response to different conflict situations; interconnections to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, especially Goals 5 and 16; and best practices for ensuring national and local ownership of conflict prevention and peacebuilding processes.

The event will feature comments from the President of the General Assembly, as well as representatives from government, the UN system and nongovernmental organizations. It will take place at UN Headquarters, from 13:15 to 14:30 EST. The live webcast can be viewed at http://webtv.un.org, and live-tweets can be followed via @GrafStephenand #partners4peace.

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