The United Nations General Assembly and the Security Council simultaneously adopted Resolution 1947 on the “Review of the Peacebuilding Architecture” on 29 October 2010.
The Resolutions call on “all relevant UN actors to take forward, within their mandates and as appropriate, the recommendations of the report with the main aim of further improving the effectiveness of the Peacebuilding Commission” and also “recognizes that the peacebuilding work of the United Nations requires sustained and adequate resources to meet the challenges”.
The South African Department of international Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO) commended the ‘invaluable contribution’ by the Africa-wide review of the PBC facilitated by ACCORD in Durban, South Africa in April 2010. The high-level seminar brought together countries on the agenda of the PBC and potential candidate countries, i.e. Burundi, Liberia, Sierra-Leone, Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Sudan.
The Resolution follows the Report on the PBC by the Co-Facilitators, i.e. the South African Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Ambassador Baso Sangqu, and the Permanent Representatives of Ireland, Ambassador Anne Anderson and Mexico, Ambassador Claude Heller.
Recommendations of the Report include the need to: enhance cooperation between the PBC and the Security Council, the General Assembly and ECOSOC; focus on long-term development; encourage national ownership of peacebuilding processes; strengthen the field versus New York connection and provide sufficient resources for post-conflict peacebuilding. The Security Council must allow for meaningful participation by the PBC in drafting resolutions for countries on its agenda.
These wide-ranging recommendations concern all levels of the peacebuilding architecture, from operations in the field to the composition of the Peacebuilding Support Office, to cooperation with regional organizations such as the African Union. In general, the review recommends a greater focus on capacity-building in the countries concerned, alongside closer coordination with critical partners such as international financial institutions.
As Chair of the African Union Post Conflict Reconstruction and Development Committee on the Sudan, and guided by the vision of an Africa without conflict, South Africa supports the work of the PBC and the successful implementation of the recommendations of the review.
