UN's peace building efforts struggling due to inadequate funding, says India

Highlighting that funds available for UN's peacebuilding efforts are barely one per cent of the annual peacekeeping budget, India has told a high-level meeting here that UN's peace building efforts are "struggling" due to inadequate funding, a result of genuine political will.

"The concept of peacebuilding, that expanded the focus to post conflict situations and led to the establishment of UN's peacebuilding architecture around a decade ago, is struggling due to lack of adequate funding that betrays a lack of genuine political will," Additional Secretary in the Ministry of External Affairs A Gitesh Sarma said in his address to the high-level meeting on peacebuilding and Sustaining Peace at the UN General Assembly on Wednesday.

Sarma said while peacekeeping, the flagship activity of the UN, has been largely successful in containing inter-state conflict situations, its limitations in tackling chronic intra-state armed conflict situations, notwithstanding large-scale deployment of troops and other resources, are obvious.He pointed out that the funds available for UN peacebuilding efforts are not even 1 per cent of the annual budget for UN peacekeeping. In this context, India welcomed the specific financing options presented by Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in his report. These need to be examined seriously to address the current levels of funding that remain very inadequate, Sarma said.