S/PV.9482 Security Council

I would like to warmly welcome the Secretary-General, the ministers and other high-level representatives present in the Security Council Chamber. Their presence today underscores the importance of the subject matter under discussion. In accordance with rule 37 of the Council’s provisional rules of procedure, I invite the representatives of Algeria, Angola, Australia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, the Plurinational State of Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Canada, Chile, Croatia, Cuba, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Denmark, Djibouti, Egypt, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Italy, Kenya, Mali, Mexico, Morocco, the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Nigeria, Pakistan, Panama, the Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, the Republic of Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sierra Leone, Slovenia, South Africa, South Sudan, Spain, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Türkiye, Ukraine, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and Viet Nam to participate in this meeting. In accordance with rule 39 of the Council’s provisional rules of procedure, I invite the following to participate in this meeting: Ms. Dilma Rousseff, President of the New Development Bank; and Mr. Jeffrey Sachs, President of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network and Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University. In accordance with rule 39 of the Council’s provisional rules of procedure, I also invite His Excellency Mr. Olof Skoog, Head of the Delegation of the European Union to the United Nations, to participate in this meeting. The Security Council will now begin its consideration of the item on its agenda. I wish to draw the attention of Council members to document S/2023/870, which contains the text of a letter dated 14 November 2023 from the Permanent Representative of China to the United Nations addressed to the Secretary-General, transmitting a concept note on the item under consideration. I now give the floor to the Secretary-General, His Excellency Mr. António Guterres.

I thank the Government of China for convening this debate on the vital link between development and sustaining peace. This link has defined the United Nations from the very start. Our Organization is built on three pillars: peace, development and human rights. This has been reaffirmed time and again. The 2005 World Summit Outcome declared that “development, peace and security and human rights are interlinked and mutually reinforcing” (General Assembly resolution 60/1, para.  9). Development by itself is not enough to secure peace, but development is essential, and no peace is secure without inclusive and sustainable development that leaves no one behind. Of course, this recognition also defines the 2030 Agenda and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Just as progress towards one Goal lifts all others, failure in one area risks reversing gains across the board. And no failure is more calamitous than the failure to prevent conflict. Indeed, development gains are often among the first casualties of war. We see this pattern play out across the world: the closer a country is to conflict, the farther it is from sustainable and inclusive development. Nine of the 10 countries with the lowest human development indicators have experienced conflicts or violence in the past 10 years. Inequalities and lack of opportunities, decent jobs and freedom can breed frustration and raise the spectre of violence and instability. Weak institutions and corruption increase the risk of conflict. Climate chaos and environmental degradation are further crisis multipliers. With ever-worsening climate emergencies, record heat and growing competition for dwindling resources, people are forced to move and vulnerabilities and insecurities skyrocket. Organized crime and violent extremist and terrorist groups find fertile ground in such environments, fraying the social fabric and further aggravating insecurities and corroding effective governance. But just as the lack of development feeds grievances that can increase the risk of conflict, the reverse is also true. Human development lights the way to hope, promoting prevention, security and peace. That is why advancing peace and advancing sustainable, inclusive development go hand in hand. Building peace means ensuring food security, access to education and the development of skills, health care, social protection and dignity for all. Building peace means strengthening resilience to climate shocks and investing in adaptation. Building peace means closing the digital divide and harnessing the benefits of digital inclusion, while protecting against the potential perils of new technologies. Building peace means balancing the scales of power and participation equally for women and creating opportunities for young people. Building peace means scaling up affordable long-term financing for developing countries everywhere so that they can invest in public goods and services for their peoples. At a time when 85 per cent of the SDG targets are off track, we must act on this understanding with far greater urgency and ambition. Developing countries, particularly the least developed countries, are being battered by a perfect storm of crises — crushing debt burdens, evaporating fiscal space and soaring prices, escalating climate catastrophe, widening inequalities and worsening unemployment and poverty, as well as the lingering effects of the coronavirus disease pandemic and unequal recovery. It is a recipe for social strife, political instability and, ultimately, open conflict. We must do more to support countries in dire straits. I have been advocating for bold steps to make our global institutions, including the international financial architecture, more representative of today’s realities and more responsive to the needs of developing economies. I have also proposed a set of concrete actions that we can take now, including an SDG stimulus of $500 billion a year to reduce debt burdens and release resources for long-term, affordable financing from multilateral and private sources, because investing in development today means investing in a more peaceful tomorrow. Each and every day, the women and men of the United Nations are bringing the link between peace, development and justice to life in our work around the world. Our United Nations country teams are spearheading efforts to support national priorities for sustainable and inclusive development. Our United Nations peacekeeping operations are assisting Member States as they manage and resolve conflicts. My envoys and the United Nations special political missions are facilitating political processes, mediating and preventing the eruption of open conflict, and our Peacebuilding Commission is bringing the international community together around the mutually reinforcing nature of peace and development. I call on Member States to strengthen the Commission and enhance the effectiveness of its work. The Security Council, in particular, could be more systematic in seeking the advice of the Commission on the peacebuilding dimensions of the mandates of peace operations, and our peace operations should be empowered to play a greater role in sustaining peace at all stages of conflict and in all its dimensions. We are proud of our work, but we also know that more must be done to join up humanitarian, peace and development efforts. I have put forward proposals for a New Agenda for Peace in a time of rising tensions and proliferating conflicts. Those ideas are framed around core principles that are foundational to the Charter of the United Nations and to a stable world. We offer extensive thoughts that recognize the interlinked nature of the many challenges we face, and that clearly reflect our commitment to linking actions for peace with the Sustainable Development Goals more firmly. That begins with more determined action to strengthen prevention, anchored in full respect for all human rights — civil, political, economic, social and cultural. It also calls for the transformation of gendered and intergenerational power dynamics across the board, including in peace and security. It is past time for action to ensure women and young people’s meaningful participation and leadership in decision-making, to eradicate all forms of violence against women and to uphold women’s rights. (spoke in French) The New Agenda for Peace sets out a vision for preventing conflict, sustaining peace and promoting development that applies to everyone, in every country, at all times. As an international community, we must realize that we are only as strong as our weakest link. That sense of shared vulnerability must be translated into a common desire to save lives and sustain development gains whenever and wherever they are threatened. I therefore welcomed the General Assembly’s adoption in September of the political declaration of the High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development and the shared commitment by Member States to implementing “bold, ambitious, accelerated, just and transformative actions, anchored in international solidarity and effective cooperation at all levels” (General Assembly resolution 78/1, annex, para.9). Today I call on all Member States to approach the Summit of the Future in the same spirit of solidarity and ambition. To secure peace and advance development, we must abandon the doomed logic of zero-sum competition, recommit to the path of cooperation and find the courage to compromise. The Security Council must be at the heart of that vital effort.

I thank Secretary-General Guterres for his briefing. His deep analysis and important understanding, together with the ideas he has put forward, are very significant for the next phase of our work and for today’s discussion. I thank him once again. I now give the floor to Ms. Rousseff. Ms. Rousseff: Since the creation of the United Nations in 1945, the world has undergone significant transformations. Considering the challenges facing humankind, the central theme of this meeting, “Promote sustaining peace through common development”, is very timely, and I thank the Government of China for inviting me to speak at this important meeting. Cooperation among countries that is broad, productive and respectful, conducive to dialogue and consensus, is a guiding principle for achieving the peace and development that we need if we want to address the seriously unstable and disruptive times that the world is experiencing. I would like to remind the Council that back in 2011, when I was President of Brazil, we proposed a debate on the interdependence of security and development (see S/PV.6479). At the time, the Council emphasized that the rebuilding and rehabilitation of countries’ economies are crucial elements in the long-term development of societies and the creation of sustainable peace. But since then, we have seen crises deepen. Sustainable peace requires a comprehensive approach taking into account not only the causes of violence but also social and economic situations. Poverty alone does not explain violence, and not all individuals or groups suffering from poverty resort to aggression, but social, political and economic exclusion can contribute to the emergence, prolongation or recurring use of violence that fuels conflicts. It is clear that development, peace, security and human rights are interconnected and mutually reinforcing. If we want peaceful environments, we need economically and socially inclusive development. The world is facing overlapping crises, such as slow growth and high inflation; a sharp increase in inequality; protectionism that fragments global value chains; serious geopolitical conflicts causing huge loss of life and extremely severe climate change resulting in rising temperatures and the spread of natural disasters. The terrible consequence is that today insecurity and instability have become the rule rather than the exception. Financial neoliberalism has turned credit and financing into headwinds, rather than drivers of a productive economy. They have become obstacles at the centre of rampant speculation that drains all resources. The growing concentration of income and wealth in the hands of very few has brutally increased inequalities in developed countries while also creating more poverty, speculation and successive debt crises in developing countries. The weak regulation of international finance has failed to prevent recurring crises linked to financialization. The regulatory measures recommended after the 2008–2009 crisis have not been able, in fact, to prevent the occurrence of new speculative bubbles or problems of excessive liquidity. Globalization has weakened since the most recent global financial crisis and has also been threatened by the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) and worsening geopolitical confidence. The adoption of beggar-thy-neighbour policies that produced the First and Second World Wars, combined now with decoupling and de-risking policies, have intensified those already serious trends. The dynamics of globalization have given rise to a profound interdependence among the economies and regions of the world, and interconnection that has grown in parallel with the increase in international trade, the greater density of global value chains and the proliferation of capital flows. Today economic crises, geopolitical conflicts, COVID-19 and the especially the emergence of unbridled protectionism are creating a momentum of violence and the resurgence of regional conflicts. In recent times, the reaction to those factors produced undeniable multilateral trends among emerging economies and developing countries and within some regions, such as Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. If disconnecting the world has become increasingly difficult, it is urgent to contain the impetus towards fragmentation and confrontation that has emerged in recent years. We know that attempts to erect insurmountable barriers can produce disruptive consequences. The growing trend towards multilateralism is in fact a way to circumvent the protectionism of central economies, which is an important instrument for creating an environment suitable for economic growth and development. That also allows for the emergence of new actors in the economic and financial landscape as emerging economies. The pursuit of peace and sustainable and inclusive development for all can be successful if based on the principles of consensus-building multilateralism and international cooperation. The failure to appeal to those principles, as Council members are witnessing today, results in profound failures in international governance. The United Nations was created to prevent humankind from entering into conflicts such as the bloody Second World War. The principles and values that form the foundation of the United Nations are significant and enormous achievements of humankind because they are crucial in creating space where consensus can be built for cooperation, dialogue and mutual understanding, especially when it comes to preventing or halting violence and wars. If the United Nations has been unable to address the growing geopolitical tensions and the so-called Bretton Woods institutions — the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization — have not demonstrated their ability to reverse the trends of geoeconomic fragmentation and increasing social fragility, we have a mission, that is, to empower the United Nations and reform the Bretton Woods institutions. They are indispensable to make the system capable of dealing with any type of crisis. The conditionalities imposed by international financial institutions on developing countries and emerging economies when they face crises must be rejected. It is important to reject the double standard of rescue that has been applied during crisis. If it is a bank, it is too big to fail. But if it is a country — regardless of its size — it can be left to fail. Another clear symptom of the lack of coordination in international governance is the alarming fact that the climate crisis and the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are not being addressed in accordance with the decisions made at all Conferences of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and other international environmental forums. As my dear friend António Guterres expressed in his address during the most recent session of the General Assembly (see A/78/PV.4), we need determination to uphold our commitments. The capital contributions that wealthy countries have committed to make to developing countries since the fifteenth Conference of the Parties, the 2030 Agenda that defined the Sustainable Development Goals and even the Paris Agreement have never materialized. Furthermore, according to the principle of common but different differentiate responsibilities, as defined by the Kyoto Protocol, there is a great responsibility on the part of developed countries in financing climate change. Therefore, neither the Sustainable Development Goals nor the fight against climate change can be achieved without allocating and investing new funds from developed countries. The poorest countries need new resources to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals in a way that does not further burden them with debt that they cannot bear. Similarly, resources for climate change adaptation mitigation need to be made available, respecting the free exercise of full and permanent national sovereignty of developing countries over all their wealth, natural resources and levels of economic activity. Therefore, it is imperative to build effective consensus and adopt a new stance of close cooperation between developed and developing countries to address those serious issues. Multilateral development banks have an important role to play in development financing and can assist low- and middle-income countries in moving forward on their development path, addressing climate change and achieving the SDGs. However, those banks play only a complementary role, and it is not possible to transfer to them the responsibility for providing all the resources for development efforts and climate change adaptation and mitigation that have been undertaken by wealthy countries and have not been fulfilled so far. Developing countries have often suffered the effects of rising interest rates and currency depreciation. The high indebtedness of those countries, largely caused by neoliberal austerity policies or liquidity shortages, has affected their external debt, and many of them have come close to defaulting as a result. Developing countries and emerging markets are struggling to generate prosperity, as their populations cannot support the burden of financing climate change. The challenge faced by most nations of that group is also how to overcome the condition of being mere suppliers of commodities. Some of those countries need to pursue a process of industrialization, with new characteristics. Many countries have not even reached the third industrial and technological revolution. And now, in the face of the fourth industrial revolution, they risk becoming mere consumers of products from platforms, limited to being users of digital apps in their economies. The fact is that the technological gap between developed and developing countries, especially the digital divide, is establishing new inequalities in development that we have to face. From another perspective, it is important to consider that the concepts of cooperation and consensus are in opposition to the rhetoric of narratives that seek to impose a sectarian view of development, human rights and democracy. This is not in our interest and cannot continue any longer. The United Nations, for instance, was created to defend humankind from the lethal ideologies that sustain the right of a few to have cultural and ethical supremacy over people across the world. Political models derived from the experience of a single country have been elevated to the status of the only acceptable standard of the entire world. The adoption of that standard is imposed as mandatory. Otherwise, values are imposed through traditional warfare, coups, or blockades and sanctions. The rich diversity of human societies can no longer be dismissed. The different trajectories and development models followed by different nations cannot be ignored. It is not possible, in a plural and multipolar world, to be forced to choose a single path of development or a single vision of democracy. A neoliberal vision proposed by one country or history to a group of countries has allowed for the weakening of democracy in many countries and the resurgence of fascist regimes, and could open the door for genocides. When dichotomies arise, all countries are confronted with a choice: polarization or common prosperity; cold war mentality or multilateralism; copying other countries’ development models or building one’s own path in life in the light of each nation’s conditions; and fighting climate change with meaningful injections of new money or simply leaving things as they are. As a result of the severe socio-natural challenges of the current century, economic development must be always viewed as sustainable, inclusive and resilient development. That means that it depends critically on health, the environment and societies built on a foundation of equality, in addition to peace and stability in a world of mutual understanding, dialogue and cooperation. Dealing with this troubling situation requires an urgent and indispensable new level of political and institutional engineering, if we genuinely want to promote inclusive and sustainable development in an environment of common prosperity and peace for all. Without inclusive and sustainable development, there is no peace. Without peace, there is no stability or security. The different paths and development models followed by different nations cannot be dismissed. It is not possible to be forced into a single development path and a single vision of democracy. Improving international governance lies at the core of building a future of common development for all. For all those reasons, it is essential to ensure an effective adaptation power within the United Nations system. That is the only way that the voice and rights of the majority of humankind can be heard. I wish the Council a fruitful and productive discussion.

I thank Ms. Rousseff for her briefing and her contribution to this meeting. I now give the floor to Mr. Sachs. Mr. Sachs: Today’s meeting takes place at a time of several major wars. In my testimony, I will refer to four of them: the Ukraine war, which started in 2014 with the violent overthrow of Ukraine’s President Viktor Yanukovych; the Israel-Palestine war, which has flared repeatedly since 1967; the Syrian war, which began in 2011; and the Sahel wars, which began in 2012 in Mali and have now spread throughout the Sahel. Those wars may seem intractable, but they are not. Indeed, I would suggest that all four wars could be ended quickly by agreement within the Security Council. One reason for that is that major wars must be fed from the outside, both with external finances and armaments. The Council could agree to choke off those awful wars by withholding external finance and armaments. That would require an agreement among the major Powers. The other reason why those wars could end quickly is that they result from economic and political factors that can be addressed through diplomacy rather than through war. By addressing the underlying political and economic factors, the Security Council could establish conditions for peace and sustainable development. Let me briefly consider each of the four wars in turn. The war in Ukraine has two main political causes. The first is the attempt by NATO to expand to Ukraine, despite the timely and repeated objections by Russia. Russia considers NATO presence in Ukraine as a significant threat to Russia’s security. The second political cause is the east-west ethnic division in Ukraine, partly along linguistic lines and partly along religious lines. Following the overthrow of President Yanukovych in 2014, ethnic Russian regions broke away from the post-coup Government and appealed for protection and autonomy. The Minsk II agreement, endorsed by the Council in resolution 2202 (2015), called for regional autonomy to be incorporated into Ukraine’s Constitution, but the agreement was never implemented by Ukraine, despite the backing of the Security Council. The economic cause of the war results from the fact that Ukraine’s economy faces both west to the European Union (EU) and east to Russia, Central Asia and East Asia. When the EU tried to negotiate a free trade agreement with Ukraine, Russia expressed alarm that its own trade and investments in Ukraine would be undermined unless a three-way agreement was reached among the EU, Russia and Ukraine to ensure that Ukrainian-Russian trade and investment would be sustained alongside EU-Ukrainian trade. That is a well-known event in trade negotiations. Unfortunately, the EU was apparently not prepared to negotiate with Russia over such a three-way arrangement, and the competing east-west orientation of Ukraine’s economy was never resolved. The Council could end the Ukraine war quickly by addressing its underlying political and economic causes. On the political front, the countries of the five permanent members of the Council (P5) should agree to extend a security guarantee to Ukraine while also agreeing that NATO will not expand to Ukraine, thereby addressing Russia’s concerns over NATO enlargement. [RO] The Council should also work to achieve ...The Council should also work to achieve a lasting governance solution regarding Ukraine’s ethnic divisions. On the economic side, there are two considerations, one in policy and the other in finance. On policy, Ukraine’s strong economic interest is to join the European Union, while also maintaining open trade and financial relations with Russia and the rest of Eurasia. Ukraine’s trade policy should be inclusive rather than diversionary, allowing Ukraine to serve as a vibrant economic bridge across eastern and western Eurasia. On the financing side, Ukraine will need funding for reconstruction and for new physical infrastructure, such as fast rail, renewable energy, 5G and port modernization. As I will describe, I recommend that the Security Council establish a new peace and development fund to help mobilize the financing to help Ukraine and other war zones turn away from war towards recovery and long- term sustainable development. To consider the war in Israel and Palestine in a similar way, there too the war could be ended quickly if the Council enforced the many resolutions it has adopted over several decades — including resolutions 242 (1967), 338 (1973), 1397 (2002), 1515 (2003) and 2334 (2016) — that have called for a return to the 1967 borders, an end to Israel’s settlement activities in the occupied territories and the establishment of a two-State solution. It is clear that Israel and Palestine have been unable to reach agreements that are in line with those resolutions. On both sides, hardliners repeatedly frustrate moderates, who seek peace based on a two-State solution. In my view it is therefore high time for the Security Council to enforce its decisions by implementing a just and lasting solution that is in the interests of both Israel and Palestine, rather than allowing hardliners on both sides to ignore the Council’s mandate and thereby threaten global peace. My recommendation to the Council is that it immediately recognize the State of Palestine in a matter of days or weeks and welcome Palestine as a full member of the United Nations, with its capital in East Jerusalem and with sovereign control over the Islamic holy sites. The Council should establish a peacekeeping force drawn heavily from the neighbouring Arab countries to help provide security in Palestine. Such an outcome would respond to the overwhelming will of the international community and would be in the manifest interests of both Israel and Palestine, despite the vociferous objections by hardline rejectionists on both sides of the divide. An economic strategy should accompany the political strategy. It is vital that a new sovereign State of Palestine be economically viable, and I give several examples of how that can be done. But most importantly, both Israel and Palestine should become part of an integrated sustainable development plan for the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East that supports climate resilience and the region’s transition to green energy. Similarly, the Council could end the war in Syria. The Syrian war broke out in 2011 when several Powers in the region, together with the United States, joined forces to topple the Government of Syria’s President Bashar Al-Assad. That deeply misguided regime-change operation failed, but it triggered a prolonged war with enormous bloodshed and destruction, including of ancient cultural heritage sites. The Council should make it clear that all the P5 countries, and the countries in Syria’s neighbourhood, are in full agreement that all attempts to achieve regime change have now permanently ended and that the Security Council intends to work closely with the Syrian Government on reconstruction and development. On the economic side, Syria’s best hope is to become closely integrated into the eastern Mediterranean and Middle East, especially through the construction of physical infrastructure connecting Syria with Turkey, the Middle East and the Mediterranean nations. The war in the Sahel has similar roots. Just as the regional Powers and the United States aimed to overthrow the regime of Bashar Al-Assad in 2011, the NATO Powers similarly aimed to overthrow the regime of Muammar Al-Qaddafi. In pursuing that aim, they grossly overstepped the mandate of the Council’s resolution 1973 (2011), which had authorized the protection of Libya’s civilian population but certainly not a regime change led by NATO. The violent overthrow of the Libyan Government quickly spilled over into the impoverished countries of the Sahel. Their poverty alone made the Sahelian countries highly vulnerable to an influx of armaments and militias. The result has been ongoing violence and multiple coups, gravely undermining the possibility of economic improvement. The countries of the Sahel form a natural aggregation for regional economic investment in infrastructure. The entire region urgently needs investments in electrification, digital access, water and sanitation and road and rail transport, as well as in social services, notably education and health care. Since the Sahel is one of the poorest regions in the world, if not the poorest, the Governments there are utterly unable to finance the needed investments. Here too — and perhaps more than in any other region — the Sahel needs external funding to make the transition from war to peace and from extreme poverty to sustainable development. All of the members of the P5 — and indeed the whole world — have suffered adverse consequences from the continuation of those wars. All countries are paying a price in terms of financial burdens, economic instability and risks of terrorism and wider war. The Security Council is in a position to take decisive actions to end these long-standing wars, precisely because it is clear that it is in the interests of all Council members — and notably all the P5 — to bring them to an end before they escalate into even more dangerous conflicts. The Security Council is vested with considerable powers by the Charter of the United Nations when it has the resolve of its members. It can introduce peacekeepers and even armies if necessary. It can impose economic sanctions on countries that do not comply with its resolutions. It can provide security guarantees to nations. It can make referrals to the International Criminal Court to stop war crimes. In short, the Council is certainly able to enforce its resolutions if it chooses to do so. For the sake of global peace, let the Council now choose to end those wars. The Council can also bolster its toolkit by engaging in economic peacebuilding alongside the more usual decisions on borders, peacekeepers, sanctions and the like. I have mentioned several times the idea of creating a new peace and development fund that the Security Council could deploy to create positive dynamics for sustainable development and to work with investors such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, regional development banks such as the New Development Bank and others to coinvest in peacemaking. I would recommend three guideposts for such a fund. First, the major Powers would fund it by transferring part of their military outlays to global peacemaking. The United States, for example, now spends roughly $1 trillion per year on the military sector, while China, Russia, India and Saudi Arabia are the next biggest spenders, with their combined military expenditures at roughly half of that of the United States. If those countries were to reduce military outlays by just 10 per cent and redirect the savings to the peace and development fund, that alone would free up around $160 billion per year. Secondly, the fund would emphasize regional integration. That is paramount for both peacemaking and successful development. Ukraine would be helped to integrate both west and east. Israel, Palestine and Syria would all be helped to integrate into a network in the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East. The Sahel countries would be helped to overcome their isolation and lack of services through a network of infrastructure. Thirdly, the peace and development fund would partner with other funding streams such as China’s Belt and Road Initiative, the European Union’s Global Gateway, the Group of Seven (G7) Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment and increased lending by the Bretton Woods institutions and the regional development banks, as the Secretary- General has called for in the Sustainable Development Goal stimulus. Interestingly, the fund for peace and development could be a vehicle for greater investment partnerships linking China, the EU, the United States and the G7. That too would be a contribution to peace, not only by ending today’s wars but by increasing cooperation among the world’s major Powers. Directly across the street from us is Isaiah’s wall, with the visionary words of the great Jewish prophet of the eighth century B.C.E.: “[T]hey shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore” (The Holy Bible, Isaiah 2:4). It is time to honour Isaiah’s words by ending these useless and destructive wars, slashing military outlays and turning the savings into new investments in education, health care, renewable energy and social protection. As an American, I am proud that our greatest president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was the visionary who oversaw the establishment of this great institution. I firmly believe in the capacity of the United Nations and the Security Council to keep the peace and to promote sustainable development. When all 193 Member States, or 194 with the membership of Palestine, live up to the United Nations Charter, we will have a new global age of peace and sustainable development.

I thank Professor Sachs for his briefing. I believe that many of his insights will be extremely enlightening for our discussion. I shall now make a statement in my capacity as the representative of China. Once again, I would like to thank Secretary-General Guterres, President Rousseff and Professor Sachs for their briefings. Their insights are truly enlightening. I would also like to extend a warm welcome to the representatives of Member States participating in today’s meeting. Peace, development and human rights are the three pillars of the United Nations. Among them, development holds the master key to solving all problems and constitutes the basis for promoting peace and protecting human rights. The Security Council is entrusted with the primary responsibility of maintaining international peace and security. It is important to recognize that peace and development are intrinsically linked to achieving lasting peace. We must effectively address the root causes of conflict and propose solutions from a development perspective. Some hotspot issues have remained open wounds for a long time. Some have even plunged into a vicious cycle of relapse. All those situations warrant deep reflection. China convenes this open debate with a view to advocating a deeper and broader view of security issues, filling the gap under the development pillar of the United Nations, promoting the idea of development for peace and exploring holistic and effective ways to build sustainable peace. I would like to share the following points. First, achieving essential, inclusive and sustainable development represents the cornerstone of sustaining peace and stability of States. The majority of the hotspot issues of which the Security Council is seized are in less-developed regions, with poverty and uneven development as their common challenges. Secure livelihoods are the basis for achieving national stability. Developing agriculture and achieving food self- sufficiency is the only viable means of fighting hunger. Scaling up industrial and infrastructure development is the sure way to improve living conditions and create more jobs. Better health care is essential for the protection of public health. Expanding and improving education is a sine qua non if we want young people to see hope. Only by realizing people-centred development and eradicating poverty can we eliminate the breeding ground for extremism, conflict and violence. Only by achieving inclusive and sustainable development can we lay a solid foundation for sustaining peace. Fragile countries must rationally distribute their social wealth and ensure equal access to public services. In particular, it is imperative to enhance regional development coordination and protect the rights of all communities and all social segments to enjoy equal development, with special attention paid to vulnerable groups and areas with the biggest development challenges so that development results can benefit the entire population more equitably. It is crucial to prevent excessive gaps between the rich and the poor and between the developed and the less developed and to bring States onto the path of sustaining peace and sustainable development. Secondly, achieving mutual respect and common development is an effective way to maintain international peace. We have taken note that some countries, using democracy and human rights as pretexts, blatantly interfere in the internal affairs of other States and even impose governance models on others. Such practices have led to protracted unrest in some regions, as well as a surge in cross-border refugees and migrants, and have ultimately backfired on the perpetrators themselves. States have different national conditions, as well as historical and cultural contexts. We must fully respect the right of every country to choose its own development path and support each country in choosing a governance model that accords with its national conditions in formulating development strategies that leverage national endowment. The repeated relapses into conflict in some African countries fully demonstrate that the externally imposed models are often incompatible with the local environment and have generated even more problems. It needs to be pointed out in particular that the perennial inequality and imbalance in development between the North and South has an inherent historical logic. Developed countries have the obligation and the responsibility to provide tangible assistance to developing countries in achieving development. In particular, developed States should effectively honour their commitment to provide development assistance and genuinely help developing countries build up their capacity of independent development. In addition, every effort should be made to allow developing countries to benefit from the dividends of emerging industries, such as digital technology, clean energy and artificial intelligence, so as to allow a leapfrogging of development for those countries. In today’s world, the globalization process has encountered some headwinds, but regional cooperation is still flourishing and going strong. We must supercharge regional and subregional economic integration and promote the integrated development of all countries. With respect to North-South, South- South and triangular cooperation, we should enhance the international synergy for coordinated development and allow the results of global development to benefit all countries equitably. Only by strengthening the community of shared interests among all States and building a community with a shared future for humankind can we fundamentally eliminate the threats of various global security challenges. Thirdly, it is imperative to achieve common development and common security and build a development-friendly international community. Developing countries have made great strides in recent years, but they have remained marginalized in globalization and confined to the lower end of the global supply chain. That is not because developing countries did not work hard. Rather, it is because developing countries are powerless to change the injustice and inequity of the existing international order. We must resolutely reject protectionism and the practice of putting one’s own country first in international trade. We must oppose the attempts of certain developed countries to obstruct international cooperation by building wars and barriers and engaging in decoupling and severing supply chains due to factors such as ongoing geopolitical conflicts and the spillover effects of the irresponsible financial policies of a major Power. Many developing countries are confronted with greater difficulties in post-pandemic recovery, with some States and regions engulfed by turmoil or facing heightened risks. That situation is a cause for alarm. We support the United Nations in prioritizing the development agenda. We echo the call of the Secretary- General to accelerate the reform of the international financial architecture and support giving developing countries a bigger share of voice in global governance. We urge international financial institutions to better meet the pressing needs of developing countries for development finance, climate response and capacity- building. We welcome a more active role by the New Development Bank, the African Development Bank and their peers in that regard. We call for developed countries to earnestly fulfil their commitments on climate financing and technology transfer and hope that the upcoming twenty-eighth Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, to be held in Dubai, will produce more practical results in helping developing countries improve their climate-response capabilities. Sustaining peace and the sustainable development of the entire world cannot be achieved in a scenario where a few countries keep getting richer while the majority of States remain poor and underdeveloped indefinitely. We must build a development-friendly international community, encourage all countries to follow a path of common development and common security, leave no country behind on the road to development and allow no country to get hurt on the journey to peace. China is a builder of world peace, a contributor to global development and a defender of world order. At present, China is forging ahead with high-standard reform and opening up. Chinese-style modernization will not only bring about new development in China but will also create new opportunities for the development of countries around the world. China will remain guided by its good-neighbourly policy of amity, sincerity, mutual benefit and inclusiveness and promotes peace, stability, development and prosperity in the Asia-Pacific region. China has established a collective dialogue and cooperation mechanism with many countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. China spares no effort to assist developing countries, in particular the least developed countries and other countries in special situations, in achieving independent development and fostering and consolidating the foundation for peace and stability. China has proposed the Global Development Initiative and the Global Security Initiative, which serve as concrete examples of the concept of development for peace and are Chinese solutions for advancing global development and common security. China will continue to support the United Nations and the Security Council in playing a leading and coordinating role in global peace and development. China will work through the Global Development and South-South Cooperation Fund and the China- United Nations Peace and Development Trust Fund to scale up resource support and inject new impetus into the relevant activities of the United Nations and its Member States. In conclusion, I hope that today’s open debate will be an opportunity for Member States to not only fully elaborate their positions and views, but also listen to each other and enhance mutual understanding. Our common goal is to put aside differences, seek common ground, build consensus and allow the Security Council to better fulfil its important responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security. I resume my functions as President of the Council. I shall now give the floor to those members of the Council who wish to make statements.

Mozambique welcomes the initiative of the People’s Republic of China to convene this timely open debate on the theme “Maintenance of international peace and security: promote sustaining peace through common development”. We wish to express our appreciation to His Excellency Mr. António Guterres, Secretary- General; Her Excellency Ms. Dilma Rousseff, President of the New Development Bank; Mr. Jeffrey Sachs, President of the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network and Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, for their comprehensive and insightful briefings to the Council on this important topic. Armed conflicts, especially those resulting from competition for access to resources, are a scourge present in communities, States and nations, causing many deaths and forcing an increasing number of people to abandon their area of origin and means of subsistence, worsening the poverty situation. Many national conflicts, as well as regional conflicts, are directly linked to development asymmetries that have often resulted in extreme poverty, disparity in the distribution of resources and lack of jobs and infrastructure, placing populations, especially in less developed countries, in vulnerable situations. Difficulties in accessing resources and the improper usage of emerging technologies lead to an environment of conflict that has the potential to give rise to social unrest, with the risk of armed violence, and to be taken advantage of by terrorist groups in order to recruit members to their ranks, promising to satisfy their financial returns and access to resources. Indeed, history has demonstrated that the lack of sustainable development foments grievances, injustice and inequalities. Sustainable and inclusive development is, therefore, the only way to achieve durable peace that is resilient in the shocks and crises of our times and that brings our human family together. This reality compels us to reflect on the need to review our conflict- resolution strategies, in particular for those conflicts caused by poverty and driven by access to resources. These, in turn, hinder States in their respective efforts to achieve, maintain and consolidate sustainable peace. Peace and security, human rights, the rule of law and development have been established as the four pillars of the United Nations. Therefore, talking about the nexus between peace and security and development means talking about the very essence of our Organization and the aspiration of the Member States and peoples, founded on the need to avoid the repetition of the scourge of wars, as well as addressing some of their root causes. Indeed, the link between durable peace, inclusive development, security and stability is, therefore, an undeniable fact. This connection has been highlighted by various forums, including the Security Council. The international community has been reminded of the relevance of this linkage. More recently, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development made it crystal clear that “Sustainable development cannot be realized without peace and security; and peace and security will be at risk without sustainable development” (General Assembly resolution 70/1, para.35). Today, halfway to meeting the deadline for the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), we see with deep concern the aspiration of leaving no one behind becoming elusive, as only 12 per cent of the Sustainable Development Goals are on track and the rest are in jeopardy. If bold measures are not taken to put the SDGs back on track, inequality in and between countries will continue to increase. Needless to elaborate much more on the fact that the more inequality increases, the greater the potential for conflict, as this may act as a driver or threat multiplier. Mozambique places significant value on reflections on the critical nexus of the peace, security and development agenda, in line with the Secretary- General’s recently launched new policy brief called “A New Agenda for Peace”, which recognizes the interlinked nature of many of these challenges we face. His Excellency Mr. Filipe Jacinto Nyusi, President of the Republic of Mozambique, while Mozambique was Council President, and at the open debate on peace and security in Africa focusing on the impact of development policies in the implementation of the Silencing the Guns initiative, convened by Mozambique in March, underlined the need to ensure social stability through the creation of opportunities for the development of human capital (see S/PV.9299). This reality allows us to convincingly affirm that a purely traditional military solution can no longer be seen as the only way to achieve, maintain and promote peace. Rather, a more comprehensive and coordinated approach among Member States is necessary, with special emphasis on the reinforcement of synergies between common development, aiming at capacitating States to ensure and sustain peace. It is, therefore, important to give the economic, social and inclusive development dimensions the same attention given to military ones. This is because economic and social factors are often the root causes of conflicts and can fuel violence and instability if they are not adequately dealt with. Addressing these factors is crucial for building sustainable peace. As clearly indicated in the concept note (S/2023/870, annex), development should be incorporated into all phases of conflict prevention, peacebuilding and sustaining peace. Bearing in mind the importance of ensuring that the needs of all segments of the population are taken into account towards recovery, reconstruction and development, Mozambique established the Northern Integrated Development Agency, with a view to promoting the integrated socioeconomic development of the affected provinces of Cabo Delgado, Nampula and Niassa, through professional training and human settlements infrastructure development, focusing on women and youth employment. Likewise, the Northern Integrated Development Agency has been engaged in promoting the improvement of the quality of life of communities by providing access to clean water, health services, education, land and justice. Those actions have contributed to reducing poverty and development disparities and reinforcing the promotion of sustainable peace, social cohesion and resilience to conflicts. On the subject under discussion today, Mozambique would like to call upon Member States and encourage them to do the following. First, to adopt an inclusive and integrated approach to strengthening the productive capacity of least developed countries by facilitating access to more effective technological means of production, including adequate financing for the agriculture, livestock and fishing sectors, just to mention a few. Secondly, to meet their internationally agreed development commitments and take concrete measures to ensure that least developed countries have access to emerging technologies as a way of boosting common development to ensure the maintenance of sustainable peace. Thirdly, to prevent the weaponization of emerging domains and technologies and to promote responsible innovation, while highlighting the need for global governance to address threats posed by new technologies, such as artificial intelligence and autonomous weapons systems. Fourthly, to facilitate access to financing, in the light of presidential statement S/PRST/2011/4, for least developed countries and those in conflict situations to accelerate their post-conflict reconstruction processes and economic revitalization and to strengthen their resilience to conflicts. Fifthly, to prioritize investments that add value to raw materials at the location of their exploitation to create wealth and employment for the population, especially young people, as well as strengthening the State’s capacity to invest in social areas, while raising the human development index and revenues for promoting development. Sixthly, to promote confidence and trust and encourage cooperation, while creating incentives for collective action and ensuring that efforts are adapted to local and national contexts. In conclusion, as the General Assembly has emphasized, durable peace needs inclusive and sustainable development if it is to take hold and flourish, which in turn requires peace and stability. We would therefore like to emphasize the need to address all potential factors behind the eruption of a crisis or conflict in order to promote sustainable peace through common development. That holistic and integrated approach is in line with the United Nations vision of sustainable peace.

Let me start by thanking China for convening today’s important discussion on peace and sustainable development. I would also like to thank all of the briefers for their insights. When all people in a country are not able to enjoy the benefits of development equally or when they cannot exercise their fundamental human rights, the risk of violent conflict increases. As members of the Security Council, it is our job to maintain international peace and security, which means that we have the responsibility to strengthen human rights and promote equitable development so that we can prevent conflict before it spirals out of control. Let me be clear: the promotion and strengthening of human rights are not conflict drivers, as we have heard. But proactivity is necessary, because we have seen how difficult it is to take action after conflict has already broken out. Take, for instance, global food insecurity. We know that conflict is the number one cause of hunger, but we also know that hunger is a driving force of conflict. It is our job to disrupt that cycle. In 2022, the United States was proud to provide over half of the World Food Programme’s budget. But more than just responding to current famines, we need to work collaboratively to prevent future ones — whether it is helping to develop climate-smart crops and agricultural practices or helping family farmers to secure equal access to land, knowledge and financial support. That same spirit of equity applies to our financing strategy as well. Together with the Group of Seven, we committed to mobilize $600 billion in new investments by 2027 through the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment, including hundreds of billions of dollars in private sector investment. As the world’s major economies mobilize financing for development, it is imperative that we all ensure that such lending is responsible and transparent; that we prevent, rather than contribute to, unsustainable debt and even debt distress; and that we all come to the table together to help borrowers struggling to pay off their debts. The United States has been working with a broad coalition to evolve the multilateral development banks and to expand, by hundreds of billions of dollars, the availability of safe and sustainable financing, especially for the poorest countries. As we do, and indeed as we work to meet all of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the United States is committed to putting SDG 17, on partnership, at the forefront of our approach. We will work bilaterally and regionally with the United Nations and other multilateral institutions to that end. I want to be clear: as we recommit to promoting peace through development and development through peace, we must ground ourselves in principles of both human rights and conflict prevention. And we must ensure that no one is left behind. Failing to do that makes development work all the more difficult and sets us up to be reactive, rather than proactive, when it comes to securing peace. We need to identify instability and places where a lack of development and of fundamental freedoms heightens the risk of conflict. To that end, we appreciate the important roles played by the Peacebuilding Commission and the Peacebuilding Fund to identify and support States and communities experiencing fragility. I hope that we can harness the momentum of today’s event to increase the Council’s engagement with those organizations and support their work on conflict prevention, because we know that such crises result in so much senseless death and destruction and set back progress on every SDG. There is no doubt that the work will not be easy — in fact, we know it is not easy. But now is not the time for cynicism. Rather, this is a moment for renewed focus and shared dedication. As we mark the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we must make sure that sustainable development is grounded in the principles of that foundational document — one to which we all are party. We must work to make that a reality for every single person so that we can finally realize the vision of a world without conflict. The futures of our children and our grandchildren depend on that.

I thank the Secretary-General for his briefing. I also thank Ms. Rousseff and Mr. Sachs for their participation. I would like to emphasize three points. First, an observation: faced with the scale of international tensions, we need to review our methods of action. In order to genuinely create conditions for lasting peace, we need to address the root causes of conflict. Those are intrinsically linked to development issues, as we can see in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Climate change and environmental degradation are additional factors of instability whose deleterious effects will grow in the coming decades. Investing in all aspects of sustainable development helps to ensure lasting peace. Investing in education, championing women’s rights, protecting the climate and biodiversity and preserving health is investing in peace. Conversely, ensuring peace and security is an intrinsic condition of sustainable development. That is why the entire United Nations system must work together: the Security Council, the General Assembly, the organizations, funds and programmes and all development partners. Secondly, the New Agenda for Peace presented by the Secretary-General offers an opportunity for the collective renewed commitment of Member States. The proposed vision, which we support, is in line with the human rights-based approach underpinning the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. It combines development with support for political processes, respect for human rights and the implementation of the mandate of peace operations. France contributed to the development of that strategy and calls on all Member States to take it on board. However, we must not lose sight of the fact that development cannot be a one-size-fits-all response to threats to international peace and security. That is the raison d’être of the Council. Despite all the instruments of prevention and peacebuilding, we have a responsibility to react when crises arise. And we have a responsibility to support the implementation of the United Nations mandate, including peacekeeping and human rights. My final message is a call for collective action, in which France intends to play its full part. France relayed that call at the Summit for a New Global Financial Pact in June. It provided impetus at the highest level and proposed concrete solutions based on the needs expressed by developing countries. This demand for international solidarity is at the heart of the Paris Pact for People and the Planet. We must also establish a virtuous circle between economic and social development and action in order to protect the climate and biodiversity. That is the objective of the Great Green Wall project, which aims to combat the effects of climate change, desertification, food insecurity and poverty — from Senegal to Djibouti. France has helped to mobilize $16 billion for that project. Finally, I would like to reiterate our collective call to strengthen the United Nations Climate Security Mechanism. The Council must be able to better assess, anticipate and prevent the impact of climate change on peace and security and draw all the consequences.

We thank the briefers for their insights. Malta is of the firm belief that sustainable development and human rights are integral to addressing inequalities, grievances and exclusion. Often, those elements are at the root of instability and conflict. From the adverse impacts of climate change to food and water insecurity, from forced displacement to heightened inequalities, the challenges that persons in vulnerable situations face, especially in conflict- affected countries, are multifold. Such disproportionate impacts on people’s livelihoods continue to limit their capacity to ensure resilient sustainable development for current and future generations. Against that backdrop, Malta recognizes the Security Council’s responsibility in addressing those multidimensional challenges. As part of our reinvigorated trust in multilateralism, we believe in inclusive approaches to sustainable peace, where the voices of all relevant stakeholders are heard. That comprehensive vision must be underpinned by sustainability across the three strands of development — environmental, social and economic. Sustainable development is an enabler of conflict prevention and peacebuilding, as it unlocks transformative change in societies. It enhances their adaptation, mitigation and resilience to current and future shocks. We also underscore that human rights, democracy, the rule of law and good governance, on one hand, and inclusive and sustainable development, on the other, are indivisible, interdependent and mutually reinforcing. We call for a whole-of-system approach towards peacebuilding. We support further cooperation between United Nations organs, including the Security Council, the General Assembly and the Economic and Social Council, as well as bodies like the Peacebuilding Commission and the Human Rights Council. Through the relentless efforts of United Nations peacekeeping missions, special political missions, regional offices and country teams, we are better able to identify the root causes that fracture stability and to empower communities with the tools to mitigate threats. The European Union (EU) and its member States, including Malta, are the world’s leading donors of development assistance and cooperation. The EU will invest €300 billion in sustainable development over the next five years through its Global Gateway initiative. We believe in the importance of robust partnerships underpinned by a human-rights based approach to development, encompassing universal values and high standards that deliver for people and the planet, which is what the Global Gateway stands for. Our partnership with the African Union is an example of that. Inclusive development requires our collective recognition of the specific needs of women and girls in both conflict and post-conflict situations. It is in that light that we call for the full, equal, meaningful, effective and safe participation of women in all spheres and levels of public and political life, including in peace and development processes. Access to inclusive and quality education and employment opportunities is also a critical precondition for eradicating poverty, achieving gender equality and closing the digital gap. We need to empower people, especially young persons, to participate in democratic systems fully and meaningfully through capacities, resources and skills. We must also promote literacy, including digital literacy, to effectively counter disinformation and misinformation. Climate-related security risks, which are a daily and constant reality in many countries, also require our urgent attention. Sea level rise has the potential to wipe out low-lying nations, small island States and small island developing States. Extreme weather events, droughts and floods are heightening the risks of conflict and instability in vulnerable regions. In the light of that, we remain convinced that the Security Council has an important role to play in addressing those challenges. Let us not forget that climate-induced threats can also roll back decades of developmental progress.

I congratulate China for taking the initiative of convening this important debate and thank the Secretary-General for his tireless commitment to the promotion of peace and development as two essential facets of sustainable global security. I would also like to thank President Dilma Rousseff and President Jeffrey Sachs for their particularly edifying contributions to this public debate. Since the end of the Second World War, the quest for lasting peace in the world has remained hindered by a multiplicity of violent conflicts that are bleeding several regions dry. Nearly 2 billion people, or a quarter of humankind, are prey to war or cyclical crises, especially in Africa, where several hotspots of instability are becoming chronic and are sometimes forgotten. I am referring here to the Sahel region, the Horn of Africa, the Great Lakes region and the Lake Chad basin region. The horizon of lasting peace is clearly blocked by a series of crises linked to underdevelopment, geopolitical rivalries, a lack of international solidarity and the paucity of action with regard to the climate crisis. The consequences of that insecurity are reflected in people’s living conditions when they are not causes or factors of exacerbation. The destruction of schools not only amplifies fundamental economic and structural problems but is a crucial factor in recruitment for terrorists and armed groups, while it also maintains the cycle of instability and poverty of countries in conflict. In a recent report (S/2023/861), the Secretary-General highlighted the fact that 19 million children will not attend school in the Sudan as a result of the current crisis. In another report, UNICEF says that since 2020 more than 8 million children aged between 6 and 14 in the Sahel region have not attended school, which is almost 55 per cent of that age group. We know that approximately 3.2 million children have not attended school in the Democratic Republic of the Congo since November 2022. It is clear that in several regions of the world, development deficits represent a genuine challenge that is a threat to communities’ peaceful coexistence. They fuel the negative impact of antagonisms, weaken State institutions and allow intolerance to flourish. In that regard, it is essential to invest massively in development so as to pave the way towards lasting peace. That is crucial if we are to break the vicious cycle of instability, because it is more relevant to address the root causes of State fragility than to dwell on the symptoms of crises. Above all, our collective action is more effective when we reinforce societal resilience in order to prevent and reduce the heavy human and financial toll of conflicts, which compromise peace, security and sustainable development in the world in general and in Africa in particular. We agree with the Secretary- General’s 2022 report on peacebuilding and sustaining peace (S/2022/66) that the best defence against violent conflict is inclusive development that leaves no one behind. That has the merit of underscoring the importance of people-centred development, which constitutes the matrix of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Gabon has focused its international commitment to the implementation of the 2030 Agenda and the African Union’s Agenda 2063 by focusing on five key pillars, the economic, social, environmental and sustainable development dimensions, and the dimension of peace, justice, effective institutions and global-level partnerships. In order to cultivate peace, it must start with substantial investments that are commensurate to our global challenges. Above all, an inclusive approach based on conflict prevention, with the adequate and predictable allocation of financial resources to the relevant sectors, must be prioritized so as to facilitate countries’ development and address the root causes of conflicts in a sustainable manner. Particular emphasis should be placed on education, poverty eradication and youth employment in order to protect young people from networks of violence and exploitation. It is essential to provide a unified and diversified response to enable fragile States to emerge from the multifaceted crises that they are dealing with. In that regard, the role of international financial institutions such as the World Bank and the African Development Bank is essential, particularly in financing training programmes, job creation and the implementation of quick-impact projects and development programmes. And it is necessary to go well beyond the multilateral arena to mobilize the public and private sectors, including civil society, to build a genuine global socioeconomic development pact for the benefit of fragile States, particularly those in post- conflict reconstruction phases, which are especially in need of substantial funding for the recovery process. In the name of indivisibility of peace, it is the responsibility of the Security Council and the international community more broadly to support nations and regional and subregional organizations by encouraging them to adopt and implement strategies aimed at reinforcing institutions and political and socioeconomic systems in order to address the challenge of achieving lasting peace throughout the world. I would like to conclude by stressing that the perspective of the Secretary-General’s New Agenda for Peace is one of a rendezvous with hope that we cannot miss if we are to reconnect the shared goal of sustainable development to its fundamental pillars — development and respect for all human rights. I want to emphasize the centrality of a culture of peace by reaffirming that there is only one path towards sustainable peace, a peace that can withstand the crises of our time, and that is the path of sustainable development.

I would like to thank the Secretary-General, Ms. Rousseff and Mr. Sachs for their invaluable briefings today. The United Arab Emirates thanks China for bringing this important topic to the Security Council’s attention. China’s leadership on sustainable development and its impact on peace and security has made a difference worldwide, spearheading global initiatives that have led to significant investments and enabled Governments to overcome structural obstacles to development while promoting equality, stability and prosperity at scale. Poverty and inequality exacerbate the fragility and vulnerability of countries and can lead to instability and conflict. The erosion of the social fabric of communities can be exploited by actors with violent agendas. We see it time and again on issues on the Council’s agenda, from the Sahel to the Middle East. Without developing an agile United Nations response plan that factors in economic livelihoods, social inclusion and resilience strategies alongside robust political frameworks, we are always going to be plastering over the underlying peace and security issues. Investing in development pays the dividends of peace, yet the latest scorecards for the Sustainable Development Goals show us that we are far from the desired results, as only 15 per cent of the targets are on track and 48 per cent are moderately or severely off track. If we are indeed convinced of the links that we are confidently discussing here today, a radical change in approach is needed. The United Arab Emirates would like to make three recommendations today to that effect. First of all, we accept that the science is clear. The relationship between vulnerability, climate change and armed conflict can form a destructive cycle and should be addressed as such. It is a daily lived reality in many conflict settings around the world. Of the 20 countries most vulnerable to climate change, 15 are classified by the World Bank as fragile or affected by conflict. The Council should embrace innovative approaches in order to see conflicts through a climate-sensitive lens and do better to address the problem. We welcome the Council’s foresight in including in resolution 2677 (2023) a request that the Secretary-General incorporate analysis of the risks associated with climate change that could adversely impact peace and security in South Sudan in his reporting on the United Nations Mission in South Sudan. We hope to see similar reporting requests in other mandate renewals when appropriate. In a little more than a week, the United Arab Emirates will host the twenty-eighth session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 28), where we are organizing a first-of-its-kind relief, recovery and peace day. It will highlight the intersection of climate change, peace and security with a political spotlight on the importance of increasing climate funding to the communities on the front lines of the climate crisis that are also experiencing conflict and fragility. We have a window of opportunity to integrate climate action and development, and it will be critical to seize the moment. Secondly, as others have said, we must ensure sustainable and equitable access to finance, which is key. We cannot expect peace if we do not invest in it. There is no question that the current international financial architecture is not keeping pace with the challenges of the twenty-first century, and it is increasingly, in fact, acting as a barrier to development. We need to ensure that developing countries have access to low-cost, long- term financing and that the needs of the most vulnerable countries are front and centre of our considerations, including for building the resilience needed for climate change. This does require bold decisions on a reform of the international financial architecture approach. The United Arab Emirates welcomes the various reform initiatives that have been discussed on reform of the international financial institutions to date, including the Bridgetown Initiative. Those will also be an integral part of discussions at COP 28. However, we also need a quantum leap in climate financing. Expanding access to special drawing rights, for example, could free up $500 billion in climate finance for the most vulnerable countries. For its part, the United Arab Emirates has pledged $4.5 billion in financing by 2030 for African climate projects. Ultimately, sustainable development and peacebuilding go hand in hand. Supporting those efforts now is much more cost-effective than paying the price of conflict later. Thirdly, our policies, whether on development or peace and security, must be inclusive. It is simple: inclusive societies thrive. Every day that women and youth are excluded from development is a day that we hold ourselves back in the pursuit of our shared prosperity, peace and security goals. It is critical to ensure their engagement in the national strategies and measures aimed at building resilience to guarantee the stable, prosperous and peaceful societies that we talk about here every day. The full, equal and meaningful participation of women is part and parcel of nation-building, and all our efforts for security and stability must centre around that inclusion. It is a collective responsibility. The international community must ensure that development programmes mitigate climate, economic and social vulnerabilities in its pursuit of promoting peace and security.

Brazil is thankful to the Chinese presidency for organizing this very timely open debate. I also thank the Secretary-General and Professor Sachs for their insightful remarks. I gladly salute and commend the contribution of the President of the New Development Bank and former President of Brazil, Ms. Dilma Rousseff, to this debate. As the concept note (S/2023/870, annex) of this open debate rightly points out, the discussion on the interlinkage between security and development is not new. On the contrary, it dates back, at least, to the adoption of the Charter of the United Nations, when Member States agreed that, in order to ensure peace and security, they would “employ international machinery for the promotion of the economic and social advancement of all peoples”, as stated in the Preamble of the Charter. Detailed in Chapter IX, that link permeates the idea of sustainable peace, which is the United Nations ultimate goal. While the interdependence between security and development has been extensively debated, concrete measures in that direction have not always been taken. Purely military engagements in conflict situations are unlikely to bring about the sort of peace that can be sustained in the medium and long term. Without addressing the root causes of conflicts, which more often than not regard socioeconomic aspects, that ultimate goal will remain elusive. Development, peace and security and human rights are interlinked and mutually reinforcing. Those main lines motivated an open debate organized by Brazil in the Council, on this topic, 12 years ago (see S/PV.6479) during the first mandate of then President Dilma Rousseff. Since then, we have witnessed the deterioration of the international security environment. Underinvestment in prevention and in economic and social development has contrasted with the appalling increase in military expenditure and the reinforcement of approaches that respond to immediate security concerns. At the same time, new conflicts have emerged, and countries that seemed to be stable have relapsed into violence. That grim scenario invites a deep reflection on a better way to prevent conflicts and to manage conflict- affected countries and regions. Brazil commends the analysis presented by the Secretary-General in the policy brief “A New Agenda for Peace”, especially the strong case for prevention put forward. A comprehensive approach to prevention, based on full national ownership, is long overdue. Strong investment in social and economic development is an inherent part of that approach, being one of the main pillars of more equitable and stable societies. The importance of engaging more women in that endeavour and in decision-making processes cannot be overemphasized. If development is important to prevention, it is all the more important to restore peace in conflict-affected countries. Supporting conflict-affected countries in their journey towards peace and prosperity must be a system-wide commitment by the United Nations, as is the case with the Sustainable Development Goals, which feed into the same stream and should lead us into the same direction. As we have observed in different cases, violence is brewed and fed by contexts of destitution and a lack of opportunities. That situation has a disproportionate impact on youth, which, deprived of positive prospects, become easy prey to criminal or extremist groups. Without concrete advances in economic and social development, the promises of peace are fickle and the relapse into conflict more likely. The role of the international financial institutions is crucial in that regard. Countries affected by conflict and economic and institutional crises should not be further penalized when trying to access resources. International financial institutions should take their place as partners for the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals, especially by financing capacity-building initiatives related to peacebuilding and conflict prevention. Instead of demanding austere fiscal policies, international financial institutions should be aimed at projects that create conditions for economic and social inclusion and, therefore, bring about sustainable peace. Ensuring that development initiatives are as inclusive as possible should be a priority. Promoting the kind of development that effectively incorporates current technological gains and bridging the digital divide is paramount in that process. Broad access to technology can be a game-changer if well applied and can accelerate economic and social gains in many sectors. Peacebuilding has emerged as the primary tool for bridging the gap between security and development. The Peacebuilding Commission is well positioned to connect discussions across different United Nations pillars and garner international support to address underlying causes of conflict. Many of those are not dealt with by the Security Council. The proposals laid forth in the New Agenda for Peace on how to elevate the work of the Peacebuilding Commission are a very good starting point for our discussions regarding the forthcoming Summit of the Future and the 2025 peacebuilding architecture review. Only through a comprehensive perspective on the nature and particular circumstances that give rise to conflicts will we be able to both prevent and adequately address them with real and long-lasting solutions.

I thank Secretary-General Guterres, Ms. Rousseff and Professor Sachs for their remarks. Achieving and maintaining sustainable peace and security requires not just a short-term response to violence or a humanitarian situation, but also medium- to long-term efforts to prevent the outbreak or recurrence of conflict. In that regard, a comprehensive and inclusive approach built on the humanitarian- development-peace nexus is key. There is no doubt that development is one of the foundational components of peace and security. People cannot feel secure when they have no means to sustain themselves. Providing necessary infrastructure and decent economic opportunities for all will help reduce grievances and lower the risks of social instability. At the same time, for peace and security to be truly sustainable, especially after conflict situations, it is imperative to build and nurture trust among people, the community and the Government in the development process. For people to have faith in their Government, basic services such as health care, education and security must be delivered to the public. Building resilient institutions through education and training is essential. The international community should therefore support countries’ efforts to build institutions based on the rule of law, which is the basis of good governance, and to invest in people, who are the cornerstone of governance. All that takes us back to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations, which stipulate that all efforts should focus on human dignity. Yes, when we talk about peace and security, economic development is an indispensable component — yet in the end it is about the dignity of each individual. From that perspective, all development initiatives should be inclusive. It is vital to ensure inclusiveness so that every individual, including women and young people, can play an active role in securing their dignity. Development efforts must therefore encompass both the promotion of economic and social rights and the protection of civil rights. In that regard, we highlight the importance of women’s equal, full and meaningful participation as decision-makers and actors in efforts leading to sustainable peace. Their participation is vital not only in the context of the protection of women and girls in conflict, but in all stages of conflict, from prevention to peace processes and post-conflict peacebuilding. Women’s empowerment also has a positive impact on the global economy. None of that is possible in the absence of peace. The Security Council therefore has an integral role to play. The Council should adopt a consistent approach based on the humanitarian-development- peace nexus, aiming not only to resolve conflicts but to prevent their recurrence and build sustainable peace, and that requires organic collaboration across and beyond the United Nations system. In that regard, Japan, in collaboration with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the United Nations Development Programme, has launched a multi-stakeholder pledge on humanitarian- development-peace nexus approaches for the upcoming second Global Refugee Forum, to be held in December. It aims not only to provide humanitarian assistance but to enhance the self-reliance and build the resilience of the people and communities affected, as well as resolve conflicts and prevent them from recurring. Moreover, the Council should further encourage cooperation and coordination between peace operations and country teams, as well as agencies, funds and programmes. The Resident Coordinator system should harness its full potential to support host countries’ efforts to improve the capacities of their people and institutions. Such system-wide cooperation should be incorporated from the first moment that a peace operation is deployed to the moment of its departure and beyond. Further synergies can be achieved by aligning goals with international financial institutions. The Council can also benefit from the advisory function of the Peacebuilding Commission (PBC). The PBC, in deepening its discussions and lessons learned from the experiences of conflict-affected countries, can contribute to the Council’s deliberations and actions by broadening its understanding of the root causes of conflicts, as well as of early warnings, prevention and best practices for responding to emerging threats. Greater two-way communication between the PBC and the Council will strengthen the efforts of both. In all aspects of the humanitarian-development- peace nexus, upholding human dignity and building trust must be at its core if we are to achieve sustainable peace. That is why Japan promotes human security and will continue to contribute to that end.

I too thank the Chinese presidency for organizing today’s important open debate, and Secretary-General Guterres, Ms. Rousseff and Mr. Sachs for their remarks. We agree with the Secretary-General that the New Agenda for Peace sets out a vision for preventing conflict and sustaining peace and development that applies to everyone, in all countries, at all times. We also agree that we live in an era in which no nation is an island unto itself. The security and development of one country are linked to those of others, as are all issues and problems that make or break peace and stability. At the 2005 World Summit, our leaders declared that development, peace and security and human rights were interlinked and mutually reinforcing. That basic concept is also at the heart of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which was built on that understanding — taking an integrated approach, achieving peaceful and inclusive societies, providing access to justice and building accountable institutions. The best way to prevent and resolve conflicts is by staying true to the commitments that we have made to one another for an international rules-based order. When countries act in ways that violate those commitments, such as infringing on another country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, or by trying to pressure another country into acting against its own interests, or by committing human rights abuses, it undermines the security of every nation and the international system that upholds peace and security around the world. Our critical challenges and reluctance to deal with protracted conflicts are a reflection of a breakdown of our commitment to the common good and a breakup of our shared values and principles, including the indivisibility of peace and the fact that no one can really have lasting peace until everyone does. Equally, we cannot ensure basic rights for all if we select one subset of rights and ignore the rest. Moreover, we should keep in mind that respect for human rights and the rights of women are also important factors in promoting development and sustaining peace, as is the role that women play in conflict prevention, peace processes and post-conflict peacebuilding efforts. I do not think that we disagree about the main challenges we face, the need to tackle them and the priorities we should have as a world community. But I think we must change the way we approach those problems in order to deal with them effectively. Our task is to expand our horizon of possibilities and push for more action, while upholding our core norms and values. The traditional approach by which security challenges are addressed in isolation is increasingly impractical in our globalized world. As we deliberate on how to better maintain and promote stability and security through common development, it is paramount that we address conflict- affected countries’ capacity-building for development and enhance their resilience to security risks. International financial institutions must be reoriented to better promote global peace and stability. Developing countries, particularly those affected by conflict, face challenges in obtaining adequate and sustainable development resources and financial support, including for sustainable development. Realigning those institutions to provide equitable access to financing can break the vicious cycle of poverty and conflict, fostering shared development and sustaining peace. Equally, our Organization’s peacekeeping operations, special political missions and other United Nations presences can play an important role in creating conditions, both internal and external, that are conducive to the development of host countries. The Security Council can also facilitate its role by seeking the advice of the Peacebuilding Commission. As we embark on a path to promote sustaining peace through common development, I would also like to underline the importance of justice as a crucial component of our efforts to promote sustaining peace and common development. We cannot have people all over the world postpone their hopes and abandon their demands for justice. Without justice, we will have neither peace nor development. In conclusion, we agree with the Secretary-General that the Summit of the Future should recommit to cooperation and that the Council should be at the heart of it. Let me also say that investing in development today is investing for peace tomorrow.

We would like to thank China for convening this open debate. Fortunately, it is now generally accepted there can be no peace without development or development without peace. The briefings by the Secretary-General, Ms. Dilma Rousseff, President of the New Development Bank, and Mr. Sachs illustrated that well. There can never be two without three: the third indispensable component for lasting peace is the realization of all human rights — economic, social and cultural, civil and political. As former Secretary-General Kofi Annan used to say, no development without peace, no peace without development, and neither without human rights. That observation was already central to the founding of the United Nations and has been reaffirmed many times by its Member States. At a time when we are facing a world in deep crisis and in need of rediscovering its humanity, it is important to remember the inherent links among the three pillars of the United Nations. The founding countries of the United Nations resolved not only to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, but also to promote human dignity and improve the living conditions of every individual. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights enshrined civil and political rights as well as economic, social and cultural rights in a single document. Today that holistic vision has lost none of its relevance to the protection of individuals and the progress of societies. By creating the peacebuilding architecture, the United Nations has given itself powerful instruments that can — in cooperation with the Security Council — safeguard even more effectively the link between peace, development and human rights. By adopting the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the States Members of the United Nations have drawn up a road map for achieving those interrelated goals. Goal 16 anchors the consensus that development can be sustainable only if it is underpinned by peaceful and inclusive societies under good governance. The link between the three pillars has also been confirmed several times by the Council. Through its international cooperation, Switzerland has always sought to link these aspects. Switzerland remains convinced that common answers can be found through constant and constructive exchanges. There is no magic formula: we need trust, dialogue and good faith, and we need to address our differences openly and honestly. That approach must also guide us in implementing the New Agenda for Peace. That agenda makes a very clear case for working together on what unites us, not what divides us. The New Agenda for Peace establishes that cooperation cannot work unless States respect their commitments and the Charter of the United Nations in their entirety. If trust between States is vital for international cooperation, trust between Governments and their populations is integral to the functioning of societies. Low levels of trust indicate weak social cohesion, which, in turn, is closely linked to high levels of economic inequality. The New Agenda for Peace contains important recommendations for action that my country takes very seriously: using preventive diplomacy, preventing the militarization of such emerging areas as digital space, accelerating the implementation of the 2030 Agenda to tackle the underlying drivers of violence and insecurity, and addressing the links between climate, peace and security. The Council will retain its important role in those discussions only if it reinforces a holistic approach to fulfilling the prevention mandate envisaged by the Charter of the United Nations. A key element is the integration of the women and peace and security dimension into its work. No society can benefit from common development without the inclusion of all its members, and no society can prevent and resolve conflict without the equitable integration of women into peace processes. Their potential as peacemakers must be better harnessed. By giving peacekeeping missions more tools to monitor the human rights situation, the Council can guarantee the sustainability of its commitments. Resident Coordinators have an essential role to play in the interaction among the three pillars. In addition, the advice of the Peacebuilding Commission is invaluable and can galvanize the efforts of other players, such as the international financial institutions. In the course of its long-standing involvement in development cooperation, Switzerland has learned to harness the immense potential of the link between peace and security, economic development and human rights. It has learned from the principle of the three pillars contained in the Charter itself. The negotiations of the Summit of the Future must be conducted not only on the basis of trust, but also with a willingness to compromise and to be humane, and with the aim of ensuring that the next generations, who will preside over the destinies of our Governments and of the Organization, have the right instruments to do so. The Charter of the United Nations still contains all the tools we need to evolve together and collectively to save future generations from the scourge of war. That is our best — if not our only — chance of achieving lasting peace.

I wish to express my delegation’s appreciation for the manner in which you, Mr. President, have conducted the work of the Security Council during the month of November and to convey its thanks for convening this crucial debate. I also thank Mr. António Guterres, Secretary- General; Ms. Dilma Rousseff, President of the New Development Bank and former President of Brazil; and Mr. Jeffrey Sachs, President of the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network and Director of the Centre for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, for their interventions. Peacebuilding requires long-term responses, but it also requires immediate results that restore the confidence of the populations we serve. Prevention is the best tool for the maintenance of peace and security. Inclusive dialogue, mediation, consultations, political negotiations and other peaceful means are indispensable, as are economic and social development efforts. The theme of leaving no one behind has become very difficult to attain — almost unattainable, I would say — after the pandemic and various conflict situations. We are all affected, particularly the least developed countries. That is why, at the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) summit in September, we renewed our political will to get back on track to achieve the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The Council’s mandates, dating back more than three decades, recommend including a comprehensive and integrated approach encompassing political, security, development, human rights and rule of law activities. Given that peace and development are mutually reinforcing, I will focus on two key aspects. The first is related to the needs of a country in conflict or in transition. Accountability through the establishment of strong institutions is indispensable in enabling sustainable development. That entails facilitating access to justice and promoting peaceful and inclusive societies, in accordance with Goal 16. The development and implementation of plans, programmes and projects, on a case-by-case basis, are also essential to eradicate the root causes of conflict, such as poverty and inequality. The second aspect pertains to a more global approach and addresses the guiding principles that enable a transition to sustainable peace. I am referring to the synergistic and complementary work of peace missions or special political missions with United Nations agencies and regional and country offices, which support national planning and facilitate access to multilateral funding. The overindebtedness of countries in conflict — owing not only to the cost of weapons and ammunition, but also to the product of an unjust financial architecture, as well as limited access to concessional funds — invites us to reflect on the facets of fragility, since merely emerging from conflict is not enough. There is also a need to maintain satisfaction levels among the people, requiring public investment in basic services, health, education and infrastructure. Corruption is a phenomenon that causes poverty, hinders development and weakens judicial and political systems. It also damages democracy, which is why in the fight against this scourge the public and private sectors and civil society must join forces to work on initiatives that create institutional transparency and integrity. That is why we call for the implementation of the Addis Ababa Action Agenda on Financing for Development. SDG 17 calls for strengthening the means of implementing and revitalizing the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development. We urge developed countries to allocate 0.7 per cent of their gross domestic product to official development assistance and between 0.15 and 0.20 per cent to least developed countries. The world also depends on digital tools and connectivity for development. It is therefore essential to close the digital gaps between and within countries. To that end, access to financing for investment in digital infrastructure, connectivity and technological projects and capacity- building is crucial. In conclusion, I reiterate the importance of the Peacebuilding Fund as a catalyst for effective international cooperation and the central role of the Peacebuilding Commission, including the exchange of good practices and lessons learned.

I am grateful to China for convening this meeting and to all our briefers for framing the challenge. As the Secretary-General reminded us, development, peace and security and human rights are interlinked and mutually reinforcing. Conflict is an obstacle to sustainable development. A lack of development can drive fragility and insecurity, and breaking that cycle is one of the biggest challenges we face. The United Kingdom is committed to development partnerships founded on mutual respect that support national efforts to reduce poverty and instability. Today my Government launched an ambitious new international development white paper, setting out a re-energized agenda for the United Kingdom to work with partners to accelerate progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals. Under the new framework, we will champion action to address conflict and fragility and build resilience. Standing up for the values of open and inclusive societies and promoting gender equality will be crucial, and we are already working with partners around the world to do just that. In Somalia, we are supporting community reconciliation in areas recovered from Al-Shabaab. From Ethiopia to Colombia to Myanmar, the United Kingdom is working for sustainable development and peace, bilaterally and with our partners. There are profound risks when development efforts are not undertaken with great care. To sustain peace, we need to identify and address risk factors, such as horizontal inequality and discrimination, and strengthen protective factors that mitigate risks. As a decades-long international development player, the United Kingdom has learned that effective prevention efforts engage multiple stakeholders, at all levels, in multisector responses. At the United Nations, that means working better across pillars and in the institutions of peacekeeping, peacebuilding and development, as well as with partners such as the World Bank. It also means using holistic analysis to generate integrated solutions that get at the root causes of conflict and violence and establish sustainable development on strong foundations. The United Kingdom will continue to offer honest and reliable development support around the world. We will support work to tackle climate change and other issues that threaten development and peace. And we will take a patient, smart and long-term approach with partner Governments to put in place the institutions and policies that can bring about long-term peace and resilience.

Let me begin by thanking China for organizing this important open debate and for once again using its presidency to put a spotlight on the importance of common development and a holistic approach to sustainable peace, especially in conflict- affected countries. We thank Secretary-General António Guterres for his thoughtful statement and Ms. Rousseff and Professor Sachs for their unique and insightful perspectives. As the founders of our universal Organization rightly envisaged, equal attention to the interlinked pillars of peace and security, development and human rights is necessary to preserve succeeding generations from the scourge of war and to maintain global stability. Without a commitment to common development and its shared benefits, peace is imperilled, and where a people’s human rights are constrained by their own State and leaders, instability usually follows not far in its wake. Across a number of parts of the world today we are seeing a strong correlation between a lack of development and fragilities and conflict. Indeed, without the financial resources that equitable global development brings, many such countries have little or no capacity to create resilience and contain the proximate factors and triggers of conflict. Of course, at the centre of that challenge is the ineffective State — those States that for the most part have also suffered greatly from previous decades of internationally imposed one-size-fits-all policies, rolling back their role in providing services to their citizens, and continuing to endure the practices of an unfair global financial and development system that limits their access to resources and constrains their capacities. As President Nana Akufo-Addo of Ghana stated at the 2023 Paris Peace Forum 10 days ago, inequalities have implications beyond economic development, and for international peace to be sustained, all citizens must have an equal opportunity to develop their potential and contribute to global stability and prosperity. Deteriorating socioeconomic conditions alienate any citizenry and can turn them against their Government, and as we have also seen in many contexts, exclusion, marginalization and ineffective governance create State deficits that contribute to instability and conflict. We must therefore prioritize interventions to tackle the root causes and underlying drivers of conflicts and seize the opportunity of the Secretary-General’s policy brief on the New Agenda for Peace and the Pact for the Future to rethink our approach to the prevention, management and resolution of conflicts. Embracing inclusive development as the vanguard of the prevention agenda would be an important way to ensure long-term peace and prosperity for all. In response to the guiding questions raised by the concept note (S/2023/870, annex), Ghana would like to make the following additional points. First, multilateralism remains critical to serving our collective and individual national interests. Without it, we risk the violent collisions that seeking national advantage brings. However, multilateralism cannot be treated à la carte, whereby one takes the parts that one likes and ignores or tramples on others. We therefore believe firmly that the commitment of Member States to full respect for the Charter of the United Nations remains pivotal to global stability. We believe it is the predictable way to enhance trust and address the mutual concerns of all. Secondly, the dominating influence of the international financial architecture on the fortunes and capacity of States means that we are well past the time for genuine reform of the international financial system. It is evident that the architecture is not fit for purpose and has so far been incapable of addressing inequalities among countries and supporting States’ efforts to resolve inequalities within their societies. As we focus on reforms across the financial system, we also urge the international financial institutions and the multilateral development banks to prioritize the provision of well- tailored and long-term support to vulnerable countries for macroeconomic stability, strengthened resilience and sustainable and inclusive growth in a manner that makes their debt stock sustainable. Thirdly, in recognition of the contribution the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) can make to global stability, we encourage the timely and full consideration of the SDG stimulus, proposed by the Secretary-General and welcomed by the SDG Summit this past September to correct the deterioration in progress that we are seeing across many countries. We also encourage national Governments to ensure the equitable distribution of national development, address the specific concerns of youth and women, sustain the presence of the State and the provision of essential services without discrimination and ensure the inclusive participation of all segments of society, in an effort to sustain peace and guarantee security. Fourthly, urgent cross-pillar action by the United Nations, especially at the country and regional levels, is required to deepen efforts to develop resilience and sustain peace. In that regard, it is necessary for Member States to carefully consider how we fund the United Nations development system and reflect further on how we can use the reinvigorated Resident Coordinator system to get the United Nations to truly act as one, in support of the efforts of national Governments to sustain peace and create inclusive prosperity in their national spaces. The role of the Peacebuilding Commission and the synergy of its actions with those of the Council will continue to be important in building peace, including within the context of transitions in peacekeeping. We also see an advantage in strengthening networked multilateralism through partnerships with regional arrangements, such as the African Union and its regional economic communities, such as the Economic Community of West African States, to detect, at an early stage, warnings of conflict and mobilize action to prevent them. In conclusion, it is our conviction that prevention and peacebuilding should be a key part of our shared commitment under the New Agenda for Peace. Advancing inclusive economic development to sustain peace, is also a facilitator for global stability and peace. Listening closely to today’s debate, Ghana is convinced that the challenges that the lack of a common development pose for peace and security are clearly understood. We must therefore generate the necessary global support and resources to make the most vulnerable nations resilient by translating our understanding of the challenges into a clear commitment, with programmatic implications in order to address them.

We listened with great attention to the Secretary-General’s statement and the briefings by the President of the New Development Bank, Dilma Rousseff, and Mr. Jeffrey Sachs. We thank the Chinese presidency for its initiative to discuss in the Security Council the nexus between peace and development. It is particularly symbolic today as we mark Africa Industrialization Day. At the same time, we should like to underscore that, in discussing the modalities for constructively linking sustaining peace with development issues, which are still being developed in conceptual terms, it is important to ensure strict compliance with the principle of the division of labour among the Organization’s main organs in the area of peace and development, as set out in the Charter of the United Nations, and to avoid the duplication of mandates. We believe that development issues should be addressed, first and foremost, by specialized platforms, including the General Assembly, the Economic and Social Council and the development system. We share the concerns of the Secretariat and leading experts in this area that progress towards achieving the main objective of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, specifically poverty eradication, has stalled. In addition to the impact of the pandemic, it is due to serious macroeconomic miscalculations by the West and the increasing politicization of international development by major donor countries, including the collective West’s ongoing practice of illegal unilateral coercive measures that undermine the welfare of ordinary citizens in the most vulnerable States, lead to the fragmentation of global trade and restrict access to investment and technology. Developed countries are not honouring their commitments to the global South in the areas of official development assistance and climate financing. Instead, they are keen to increase weapons transfers to conflict zones, from which Western arms manufacturing companies are known to profit. At the same time, development aid from Western donors is often accompanied by interference in the internal affairs of developing States in the form of demands to implement certain socioeconomic measures, for example, skewed towards climate agenda reform, or even political changes. At the same time, we note that the European Union and the United States are primarily concerned about creating competitive advantages and impose a forced energy transition and the abandonment of traditional fuels on the countries of the global South. They themselves do not hesitate to resort to them when and where it is beneficial to them, and developing countries are ultimately deprived of the opportunity to catch up with the “garden in bloom”, which is “being greened up at an accelerated pace”. The concept note (S/2023/870, annex) by our Chinese friends also rightly draws attention to the unequal access to public and private financing, which is largely due to the structural features of the existing international financial system and its institutions, established by the West to serve its own interests. It is impossible to ignore the worsening debt crisis, the issues of the commodity dependence of former colonies, the bias of credit-rating agencies and Anglo-Saxon arbitration courts — all elements of neocolonial policy aimed at perpetuating the enslavement and underdevelopment of developing countries. In sum, ensuring the prerequisites for a decent life and a peaceful, conflict-free existence will organically require a radical reform of the international economic development system. We believe it would be worthwhile to look through the prism of multidimensional economic vulnerability — in our view, it is a useful concept that is being developed — in order to consider the situation in countries such as Syria, Afghanistan or countries in Africa, in which unilateral restrictions and blockades make it difficult to attract international financing, technical assistance and capacity-building. The United Nations should assist those countries in building a network of effective and sustainable development partnerships. We believe that, if we fail to develop a common understanding of the root causes of existing issues related to peace and development, the United Nations will be unable to reverse the trends we see today that are extremely deleterious for developing countries. Regardless of the billions of dollars that are allocated to countries in need, international peace and security will continue to deteriorate, and inequality, poverty and large-scale migration will only continue to increase. Consequently, the number and severity of conflicts will increase. One need not be an economist to understand that what is required, above all, is the mobilization of vast financial and non-financial resources for the countries of the global South to implement the 2030 Agenda, so that they can jettison colonial economic models, embark on an independent development path. It is also vital to ensure that such resources exist not only on paper or disappear into the pockets of consultants from donor countries, but actually reach those in need. Needs assessments vary. At the United Nations, we often hear that approximately $4.2 trillion is needed annually to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. However, funding alone will not be enough. It is important to fundamentally alter the approach to assisting developing countries. We must also be realistic. It is unlikely that Western ruling circles will abandon their destructive policy of maintaining their dominance in the foreseeable future. However, the world is undergoing radical change, and there is a demand for alternative methods of ensuring global stability through the establishment of security mechanisms beyond the control of Washington and its satellites, as well as through the establishment of zones of pragmatic cooperation and development in various regions of the planet. That process could be expedited by harnessing multilateral platforms that work on an equitable basis and with a constructive agenda. We see good prospects in exploiting the potential of associations operating in the Eurasian space, including the Union State of Russia and Belarus, the Collective Security Treaty Organization, the Eurasian Economic Union, the Commonwealth of Independent States, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the Gulf Cooperation Council. We also note the constructive and large-scale potential of Beijing’s Belt and Road initiative. Harmonizing their respective programmes of work will help to create a greater Eurasian partnership and find ways to ensure security and progressive economic development. There is increasing interest in the formats of South- South cooperation and trilateral interaction, which are designed to contribute to breaking the vicious circle of poverty, instability and inequality in development and to promoting the principle of effective ownership of national development strategies and enhancing the impact of individual and collective efforts. In the global context, I would especially like to note the clear growth in the authority and appeal of the BRICS group — whose members are Brazil, Russian Federation, India, China and South Africa — within which countries with different political systems are setting an example of a multipolar diplomacy aimed at reaching agreement on equitable and effective forms of trade, economic, investment and humanitarian cooperation, and in turn making a meaningful contribution to promoting development without external diktats. It is also important to emphasize that peace in and of itself does not guarantee development, nor vice versa. The growing popularity of making thematic links between various development and security elements, such as climate or access to water resources, is a cause for concern. It diverts attention and resources away from the actual objective of promoting development as such and reduces the significance of that agenda within the United Nations system. We see a risk in using development issues to introduce certain universal indicators that could be used to justify preventive steps in the field of conflict prevention and be exploited as tools for interfering in the domestic affairs of undesirable States and putting political or financial and economic pressure on them. The appearance within the United Nations of ratings of countries’ conflict potential is unacceptable. Similar politicized practices already exist among individual rating agencies in the United States, including based on development. We emphasize the importance of refraining from such stereotyping. As for the Russian Federation itself, one of the main objectives enshrined in our Government’s policy framework in the area of international development assistance is facilitating the elimination of existing potential sources of tension and conflict. Guided by that approach, we prioritize the transfer of technology and expert capabilities to the poorest and most vulnerable countries without preconditions for the development of industry and critical infrastructure. Russia is involved in projects in areas such as industrialization, digitalization and agriculture. We continue to assist with electrical power generation, including in the field of nuclear energy. We are also expanding our practice of providing Government grants, and we encourage our colleagues to follow our example.

I would like to remind all speakers to limit their statements to no more than four minutes in order to enable the Council to carry out its work expeditiously. Flashing lights on the collars of the microphones will prompt speakers to bring their remarks to a close after four minutes. I now give the floor to the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade of Hungary.

I thank you, Mr. President, for convening a very important meeting on a very important topic. Unfortunately, I have to report to the Council that the continent I come from has been dealing with very serious security-related challenges. A war has now been going on in the neighbourhood of the European Union (EU), in Ukraine, for more than a year and a half. There is also an armed conflict in Europe’s direct neighbourhood, in the Middle East. On top of that, during the past eight years, we in Europe have been confronted with the challenge posed by a massive wave of illegal migration. We Hungarians are protecting not only ourselves but also the external border of the European Union, along the busiest migratory route to Europe. I should inform the Council that we have made tremendous efforts to protect ourselves from those violent gangs and groups, whose members are no longer shy about shooting at our border guards and our policemen, sometimes even with automatic rifles. What is causing that big problem? The migratory policy of the European Union has been shown to encourage migration towards Europe and to feed the smugglers’ business model. Unfortunately, according to the migratory policy of the European Union, border protection is not considered a security duty but rather a human rights issue. However, we Hungarians are in favour of strict border protection. Our position is very clear. Violating a border is a crime that has to be properly addressed. We are all too aware that it is possible to halt migration only in cases where its root causes are being tackled. Rather than inspiring people to hit the road, we have to tackle those root causes. What are the root causes? They are twofold — first, the threat of terror and violence, and secondly, poverty and economic underdevelopment. Those two underlying causes guide our homework and what we must do. On the one hand, we have to ensure security and safety, and on the other, we have to bring investments and job creation to places where there is a need for economic development. As the representative of an EU member State and a country that protects part of the external border of the European Union, I have to share with the Council a very regrettable experience of ours, which is that terrorism and migration are forming an evil cycle. Terrorism is both a root cause of migration and a consequence of it. That is because all of those migratory flows offer terrorists a chance to hide among migrants and to go and come back without any problems. That is one of the reasons why the threat of terror in Europe has also increased, and why in certain Western European countries, parallel societies have been created. Modern- age antisemitism is on the rise, no-go zones are being established and gang wars are being fought. We Hungarians are therefore extremely interested in the success of the fight against terror, and we take part in those international efforts as well. We can see that one of the major migratory risks in Europe comes from the geographic direction of Africa. We see the Sahel region as one of the sources of migratory flows to Europe because of the region’s instability. In order to contribute to the stability of the Sahel, starting next spring we have decided to deploy 200 troops to Chad, in cooperation with the Government of Chad, to help the country’s regular forces create stability and peace in their region and to prevent further migratory waves hitting Europe. We are all aware that the population of Africa is growing exponentially. Helping to enable African countries to keep their growing population at home is therefore a crucial issue for Europe. How can we do that? By creating jobs and appropriate living standards. How do we do that? By bringing investments, job creation and technologies to those African countries. We Hungarians are doing our part. We have been carrying out tied-aid credit programmes worth $140 million in African countries in the areas of water management, food industries and public administration assistance, with another $30 million for aid programmes. In 18 countries in Africa, through investments and by creating the necessary circumstances for them, we are supporting Christian communities to be able stay where they have been for centuries or even longer. In the meantime, every year we receive 1,425 students into Hungarian universities with full scholarships from 24 different African countries. In summary, in order to be able to stop migration, which is a dangerous phenomenon — that is to say, disadvantageous for source countries and dangerous for transit and destination countries — we must strengthen our fight against terrorism. We must also bring jobs and ensure proper living standards for the exponentially growing African population. Finally, instead of inspiring people to hit the road, we have to create appropriate living standards back at home. We Hungarians are ready to continue to play our role in future.

Indeed development and integration are interconnected. I agree with the representative of Hungary that we need to work hard to put in place a virtuous cycle in order to break out of the vicious cycle. I now give the floor to the representative of Cuba.

We thank the People’s Republic of China for convening this open debate of the Security Council. We also thank the invited briefers, Ms. Dilma Rousseff and Mr. Jeffrey Sachs, for their interesting presentations. The topic takes on great relevance in a context of a multidimensional global crisis, compounded now in the aftermath of the coronavirus disease pandemic, where inequalities and poverty are perpetuated as a consequence of the current unjust international economic order, which poses multiple challenges for developing countries. Decades of ruthless neoliberalism; the persistence of irrational patterns of production and consumption of capitalism that degrade the environment; the proliferation of protectionist policies and speculative practices of big business, which drive up the prices of basic goods and services; and the impact of voluminous external debt, which squeezes the availability of resources in developing countries, also weigh negatively on the aspiration of those nations to achieve sustainable development. At the same time, international peace and security are constantly threatened by conflicts, acts of aggression, unconventional wars, blockades, attempts at regime change and frequent violations of the Charter of the United Nations and international law. We are deeply concerned about the serious escalation of violence between Israel and Palestine, which is a consequence of decades of Israeli practices of illegal occupation and colonization, in flagrant violation of the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people in their own territory, as well as the systematic flouting of the purposes and principles of the United Nations Charter and international law, including numerous relevant United Nations resolutions. The Security Council must fulfil its mandate and put an end to the impunity of Israel, the occupying Power, in which the United States has historically been complicit by repeatedly obstructing and vetoing the organ’s action, thus undermining regional peace, security and stability. We demand an immediate ceasefire and an end to the bellicose rhetoric. There is an urgent need for the delivery of prompt, sufficient and unimpeded humanitarian aid to the Palestinian people. The forced displacement of Palestinians from land that is rightfully theirs must be prevented. We reaffirm our support for a comprehensive, just and lasting solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, on the basis of the creation of two States, allowing the Palestinian people to exercise their right to self- determination and the creation of an independent and sovereign Palestinian State within the pre-1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital and guaranteeing the right of return of the refugees. How can we fulfil the legitimate development aspirations of all peoples and the joint commitment of the United Nations to leave no one behind if we do not work together to achieve a world of peace? Global military spending continues to rise steadily, reaching an outrageous $2.24 trillion last year. Exorbitant resources are squandered on sophisticated killing devices, while official development assistance commitments remain unfulfilled. Unilateral coercive measures seriously hamper the efforts of affected countries to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and overall sustainable development. The international community, including the United Nations system, must continue to firmly reject the imposition of such measures and work for their unconditional elimination. Blockades and sanctions do not contribute to international peace and security. Sustained and lasting peace requires the eradication of the root causes of conflict, especially the problems of social and economic development that particularly affect the countries of the South as a result of the existing unjust international order. China’s global initiatives, spearheaded by President Xi Jinping, can contribute to that end. There is an urgent need to safeguard world peace, prevent conflicts and wars and put development issues at the centre of the international agenda. It is also essential to promote a culture of peace, banishing hate speech. It is urgent to unite efforts and wills in the preservation of multilateralism, cooperation and mutual respect, as well as in the promotion of a just, democratic and equitable international order that puts an end to exclusion and inequalities for the common good of humankind.

I now give the floor to the representative of Egypt.

At the outset, I would like to congratulate China on assuming the presidency of the Security Council for this month. I also thank you, Mr. President, for holding this pivotal discussion on the promotion of sustaining peace through common development. Our world today is entering a new era of upheavals as we face various interlinked threats, challenges and risks. We are witnessing an increase in conflicts threatening international peace and development at the international level, resulting in food shortages, a rise in the price of energy and an increase in the poverty level as a result of the successive economic crises. Consequently, we all must shoulder our responsibility to find practical solutions to establish permanent peace as the only way to overcome those complex and overlapping situations of unrest for different reasons, with their varying long-term consequences. The only way to prevent conflicts is by faithfully implementing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its objectives. A safe environment can contribute to achieving economic development and reducing social gaps. I would like to highlight the following points, which could represent a general framework for strengthening the mechanisms of sustainable peace through common development. First, we must address the concept of development and achieving peace and security in a comprehensive manner as two sides of the same coin, particularly as a number of African countries continue to suffer from the scourge of terrorism and instability, in addition to other challenges linked to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. Intensifying efforts towards sustaining peace could accelerate national reconciliation and achieve prosperity and welfare for peoples in a sustainable manner. Second, we must mobilize resources to create the conditions conducive to economic development, foreign investments and new job opportunities based on the principle of national ownership. National stakeholders must identify, plan and implement their priorities. What we are witnessing today, in particular in Africa, means that we must look at those countries in a different way that would allow for them to make development gains by strengthening investments in infrastructure and eradicating poverty. Genuine development and advancing people’s livelihoods are the best ways to eradicate conflicts in the region. Third, we need collective action to reform the global financial system and increase financing for development. That would meet the aspirations of a large number of developing countries to eradicate poverty, alleviate the burden of debt and reduce inequality based on the principles of common responsibility and burden-sharing. The best way to prevent conflicts is through comprehensive and sustainable development. That means that international institutions must help developing countries to confront crises and build their resilience in the face of international crises. We must also create innovative and effective financing tools, in addition to enhancing the effectiveness of current financing tools. Fourth, conflict, insecurity, weak institutions, limited access to justice — those factors all threaten sustainable developments. Therefore, we must support countries’ efforts to build their institutions and national capacities and strengthen the rules of good governance so that we can prevent conflicts and help to address their root causes. We must enable national authorities to identify, plan and implement their own national priorities in order to ensure security, stability and sustainable development. Fifth, we must address the challenges facing the African continent through a comprehensive approach that helps to meet the aspirations of the peoples in Africa, foremost among which is combating terrorism, eradicating its sources and cutting off its funding while confronting extremist ideologies. Sixth, we must pay greater attention to peacebuilding. We must provide the necessary funding for that as a prerequisite to ensure that our common efforts are successful. That would provide the minimum for establishing resilience in countries hosting peacekeeping operations. Seventh and lastly, it is important to consider the recommendations issued by the Secretary-General in the New Agenda for Peace, which call for establishing a new prevention system to combat all forms of violence, focus on mediation, promote social cohesion and strengthen the link between sustainable development and peace, while respecting all human rights, including civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights. That would be accompanied with the establishment of a comprehensive vision for sustaining peace by identifying the reasons for wars and addressing them.

I now give the floor to the representative of Thailand.

At the outset, I wish to congratulate China as it continues its presidency of the Security Council this month and to express appreciation for convening today’s important open debate, on the theme “Promote sustaining peace through common development.” I also wish to thank Brazil for its successful presidency in October, and we appreciate the Secretary-General and all the briefers for sharing their insights in this meeting. Thailand has been resolute that peace will be more sustainable if anchored on human security and sustainable development. Indeed, peace and development are two sides of the same coin. Sustainable development is critical to conflict prevention. The World Bank study entitled “Pathways for Peace” identifies that development processes can interact with security, diplomatic, justice and human rights efforts to prevent conflicts from becoming violent. On the other hand, the Secretary-General’s New Agenda for Peace, based on data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, finds that conflict-affected countries are significantly lagging behind on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), especially those that relate to hunger, good health and gender equality. It is promising that the New Agenda for Peace recognizes that sustainable development is ultimately the only way to comprehensively address the interlinked, multidimensional drivers of violence and insecurity. We hope that that approach will be taken further forward. I wish to share the following observations on the agenda item before us today. First, we believe that conflicts do not occur in a vacuum. The context and drivers that brought about the conflicts themselves matter. Therefore, efforts to foster peace must address the root causes of such conflicts. Inclusive and sustainable development is a vital component throughout the peace continuum. Local development needs should be integrated in every step towards peace, from prevention to peacekeeping and peacebuilding, to forge a strong foundation conducive to sustained peace and prevent countries from experiencing the vicious cycle of conflict and poverty. Next year, as we approach the Summit of the Future to enhance multilateralism, with the United Nations at its core, our collective efforts must be mobilized towards promoting peaceful means and the pacific settlement of disputes, in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations, applicable international law and Security Council resolutions, as peace is a prerequisite for development to take root. At the same time, the Summit of the Future should gear us towards addressing poverty eradication, the development gap and the digital divide, shoring up efforts to respond to existing and emerging challenges, including climate change, and turbocharging efforts towards attaining the SDGs, which are key for peace to be lasting and sustainable. Secondly, the ultimate beneficiaries of our work here at the United Nations, whether on peace or development, are the people themselves. It is their welfare and future for which we are accountable. People-centred approaches are vital in overcoming multifaceted challenges, as they are firmly based on the interlinkages and complementarities between sustaining peace, sustainable development and human security. Inclusivity and participation are the principles inherent to such approaches. People must be empowered in order for them to play a role in designing their common path towards sustainable peace. All stakeholders, from women and girls, and people with disabilities, to other vulnerable groups, should be able to engage actively in efforts towards sustainable peace and development. Thirdly, a wider and more robust global partnership is required to ensure synergy and effectiveness in promoting sustained peace through development. This means greater coherence within the United Nations system and more enhanced partnership beyond the United Nations. The Security Council must engage with other United Nations bodies, such as the Peacebuilding Commission, the General Assembly and the Economic and Social Council, to better incorporate their expertise on development into its work, which will help to ensure a more holistic approach in delivering the Council’s mandate. International financial institutions, through engagement with relevant United Nations bodies, could also be an essential enabler in both financing for development and financing for peacebuilding. Beyond the United Nations, regional organizations can play an important role in supporting such a holistic approach. As regions know the causes of their common challenges and the appropriate solutions to them best, they should be placed in the position to contribute to peace endeavours and most importantly in prevention through promoting sustainable development most suitable to their needs. We hope that those efforts will also be accompanied by wider partnership and processes. On that note, Thailand reaffirms our support for all efforts to build peace through development at the regional and global levels. We will continue to support the efforts of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to enhance complementarities between ASEAN Community Vision 2025 and the 2030 Agenda, including through the ASEAN Centre for Sustainable Development Studies and Dialogue. We commend China for its Global Development Initiative to strengthen partnership for development and look forward to actively engaging in its activities, as a founding member of the Group of Friends of the Global Development Initiative. We will continue to work with the international community to rescue the SDGs and to promote sustainable development in the United Nations and through international partnerships. In conclusion, Thailand believes that there can be no peace without sustainable development, and peace can be sustained only when people’s development needs are met. Thailand stands ready to work with all partners to accelerate global efforts to achieve the SDGs in order to bring about sustained peace for all.

I now give the floor to the representative of Italy.

First of all, I thank you, Mr. President, for convening this meeting. Italy aligns itself with the statement to be delivered by the observer of the European Union and would like to add the following comments in its national capacity. Today’s global challenges are multidimensional and interconnected. Back in 2015, Heads of State and Government recognized in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development that sustainable development cannot be realized without peace and security, and peace and security will be at risk without sustainable development. There should be little room for interpretation and more room for action, including stronger political leadership in implementing such key operational drivers as the humanitarian-development- peace nexus. The path towards peace and development is rooted in solidarity and accountability. Solidarity among countries must be rooted in the guiding principles of leaving no one behind, recognizing that the lack of development is a main driver for conflicts, violence and insecurity. We must therefore accelerate action towards the Sustainable Development Goals. As for accountability of countries, a social pact between States and their own communities needs to be honoured along the path towards sustainable development. There are liberties to safeguard, human rights to uphold, gender and youth empowerment to achieve and the rule of law to obey, not only domestically but also internationally. Anytime a country violates international law, it becomes itself a driver of conflicts and insecurity, hampering development. The universal commitments enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, including respect for national sovereignty and territorial integrity, cannot be questioned. Peace and development, solidarity and accountability, must go hand in hand. The Secretary- General and the wider United Nations leadership are providing us with concrete pathways to make this a reality. We must tap into the potential of the United Nations toolbox linking the development agenda with peace and security, while fully embracing the conflict- hunger nexus and the climate-peace-and-security nexus. Italy fully supports the good practices implemented by the United Nations and the international financial institutions on development in emergencies, situations of fragility and conflicts. The role of the United Nations system and its agencies, funds and programmes remains crucial and must continue to be supported — politically and financially — by all Member States. These interlinkages should also be addressed in the context of the next Summit of the Future and its pact for the future. The New Agenda for Peace states that the peace we envisage can be pursued only alongside sustainable development and human rights. That is what the European Union has been tirelessly pursuing, both as the world’s largest global donor and as a promoter of rules-based, effective multilateralism. That is also at the core of the cooperation between the European Union and the African Union. In that framework, the Peacebuilding Commission and the Peacebuilding Fund are in a unique position to mobilize financial resources. Italy has just doubled its annual contribution to the Peacebuilding Fund and is committed to ensuring adequate, predictable and sustained financing for peacebuilding, including through United Nations assessed contributions. Italy will continue to spare no effort to ultimately attain the common goals of peace and development, leaving no one behind.

There are still a number of speakers remaining on my list for this meeting. Given the lateness of the hour, I intend, with the concurrence of members of the Council, to suspend the meeting until 3 p.m.