Saving civilians–The UN peacekeeping mandate, in case we’ve forgotten

Speech delivered by Ms. Kira Christianne D. Azucena, chargé d’affaires, during the General Debate on the 2019 C-34 Substantive Session on February 11-12, 2019, at the Conference Room 1, UN Headquarters, New York.

Mr. Chair,

THE Philippines aligns itself with the statement delivered by Indonesia and Morocco on behalf of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) and the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM).

We gather again to show our collective commitment to keeping and sustaining peace as a goal and a process, and reinvigorate the organization’s mandate for peace as the core principle of the UN system. This is the defining activity of a collective body born from the ashes of war.

The fame of UN peacekeeping is multiplied by the glamor of arms but married to the opposite of war—a just peace that is war’s only noble purpose. This time soldiers are enlisted, not to perpetrate the horrors of war but stop them; not to inflict violence but invite violence on themselves rather than see violence inflicted on the defenseless. Always outnumbered, ever outgunned, UN peacekeepers walk into danger, not with camouflaged headgear for stealth but with easy to spot helmets of blue—the symbol of rescue and color of hope.

The Philippines highly commends both the president of the General Assembly, H.E. Mrs. María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés, and Secretary-General H.E. António Guterres, together with all 123 Troop- and Police-Contributing Countries, for their leadership in strengthening UN peace operations through institutional reforms, clearer mandates, strategic partnerships and predictable financing.

Mr. Chair, engaged in UN peacekeeping since 1963, the Philippines stays strongly committed to investing in peace. Filipino peacekeepers have taken part in 19 UN peacekeeping operations in Asia, the Middle East, South America and Africa. Our current Philippine policy on UN peacekeeping operations is “to allow deployment of Philippine military

and police troops and personnel, regardless of the Security Threat Level.”

In the regional context, peacekeeping is one of the main elements of Asean political and security cooperation, to which it attaches great importance, as underscored in the Plan of Action to Implement the Joint Declaration on Comprehensive Partnership between the Asean and the United Nations.

Allow me now to provide Philippine recommendations on key elements in this year’s C-34 report, employing the Action for Peacekeeping (A4P) initiative as lens under the five thematic issues on peacebuilding, performance, people, partnerships and politics:

On peacebuilding the Philippines reiterates its support for UN

The Philippines welcomes the 2019 Defense Ministerial Meeting in New York City to be held on March 29 and looks forward to renewing and updating its pledges which were committed at the 2017 Vancouver Defense Ministerial Meeting.

Security Council resolution 2282, and General Assembly resolutions 70/262 and 72/199 on the review of the peacebuilding architecture. They underscore “the importance of prioritizing prevention, addressing the root causes of conflict and devising long-term peacebuilding strategies, with adequate and sustainable financial resources, which are translated to concrete measures at the country level.”

On performance, the Philippines believes that success in peacekeeping operations must be measured by the mandate to protect civilians as the “core criterion of success,” with child protection and combating sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) as key elements. Missions’ ability to protect is the standard by which UN peacekeeping is judged—affecting its legitimacy and credibility. Therefore, pre-deployment training (PDT) efforts must be tailored to countryspecific and context-specific challenges of protecting civilians with clear definitions of the responsibilities, opportunities and constraints that will be faced by peacekeepers in the field. We commend the UN Department of Peace Operations for establishing a clear framework of performance standards and assessments based on regular performance evaluations of military units, including on command and control, protection of civilians, conduct and discipline, and training. Specifically, the new comprehensive performance assessment system promotes an objective assessment of whole-of-mission performance through data collection and analysis. The Philippines also supports calls by member-states to limit “national caveats” given by host states to the force commanders overseeing peacekeeping missions in order to respond effectively on complex situations on the ground.

On people, the Philippines puts equally high priority on ensuring the safety of peacekeepers, principally by enhancing the capacity of contributing countries and drawing lessons from their satisfactory experiences in the field. We commend the Cruz Report and the UN Secretariat’s action plan to address the strategic, fundamental and systemic gaps in UN peace operations. We also acknowledge that civil society—especially women and youth who are war’s easiest victims—contribute significantly to peace.

On partnerships, the Philippines reiterates its support for intergovernmental platforms that enable peer learning among member-states on how to build resilience in peacekeeping and encourage constructive dialogues on the challenges in sustaining peace while pursuing strategic partnerships. We support the

uN’s continued engagements with regional organizations in terms of joint analysis, planning and information-sharing. We also commend the growing contributions of regional arrangements such as Asean and the African union for strengthened partnership with the united Nations in peacekeeping.

On politics, we repeat our support of calls to invest more in local political solutions to conf licts, which uN peacekeeping must reinforce and

not supplant. People in conflict situations must feel that they own the peace we merely help to bring about and keep. It is they who must configure the peace and the approaches to it. No one else.

Finally, the Philippines welcomes the2019DefenseMinisterialMeeting in New York City to be held on March 29 and looks forward to renewing and updating its pledges which were committed at the 2017 Vancouver Defense Ministerial Meeting.

I wish everyone productive and meaningful negotiations in the next three weeks.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.