Renewed UN focus can reduce conflicts
UNDP head says new regional conflicts remain a concern
The United Nations has come a long way since its founding in October 1945 after the Second World War to prevent further major global conflicts, said Helen Clark, Administrator of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) on day two of the World Government Summit in Dubai yesterday.
But a lot of work remains as a flurry of new regional conflicts continue to rage around the world, she told delegates in the opening address at Madinat Jumeirah.
To address conflicts and other pressing global issues such as sustainable development, Clark said the UN needs continued maintenance to be relevant and meet urgent calls for action.
The UN began as a 51-member country organisation tasked with global peace and security and today has grown to 193 members.
“My own independent view is that it isn’t broken, but it does need to be refreshed ... focus should be on what needs fixing,” Clark told delegates attending the fifth edition of the summit which has attracted 4,000 delegates and 150 speakers from 139 countries.
“When I came to the UNDP in 2009, I was told numbers of armed conflicts were down,” she said. “From 2011, we have seen a spike in the numbers of deadly conflicts.”
Clark said finding a solution to “dangerous waves of violence, fuelled by terrrorism”, for the UN and its Security Council has not been easy and is a work in a progress as conflicts such as Syria and Sub Saharan Africa continue to resist international attempts for remediation.
“I think that providing peace and security is at the core of the UN’s mission, it’s important to find what is driving the spike in conflicts,” Clark said, “but it’s hard to achieve.”
One of the keys to dismantling and preventing conflicts, she said, is through development that helps communities.
“Our 2030 agenda building asserts that there can be no development without peace, and no peace without development,” Clark said.
UNDP Administrator