The Challenges Annual Forum 2026 - Turning the Tide: Building Momentum for Peace Operations in a Demanding World

Good afternoon, everyone. May I ask everyone to be seated? We will start in one minute. Thank you. Excellencies, distinguished guests, colleagues and friends, good afternoon and welcome to the Challenges Annual Forum 2026, co-hosted by the Permanent Missions of Sweden, Pakistan and Denmark. My name is Benoit Pillisier, and I serve as the Director of the Challenges Forum International Secretariat. This is a particularly significant year for the Challenges Forum, as we mark 30 years of the partnership. For three decades, the partnership has brought together policymakers, practitioners, and experts from across the globe to help shape the debate on peace operations. That conversation feels particularly timely today. Peace operations face growing political, financial and operational pressures, while expectations of what they should deliver remain high. At the same time, the review of all forms of UN peace operations offers an important opportunity to consider how peace operations can adapt. This afternoon, we will explore adaptation from different perspectives, the realities facing missions today, host country consent and accountability, and finally, the vision and choices that may shape peace operations in the years ahead. Please note that this event is being live streamed, and that thus, Chatham House rules do not apply. Please also note that this event is being photographed. So if you do not wish to appear in a photo, please talk to the organizers. And now, I am pleased to invite our co-hosts to officially open the forum. Myself, leading the Challenges Forum International Secretariat, which is funded by Sweden and hosted by the Folke Bernadotte Academy, I am particularly pleased to invite Her Excellency Charlotte Kugelberg, Permanent Representative of Sweden to the United Nations. Ambassador, the floor is yours.

Thank you very much for that. Excellencies, colleagues, partners, ladies and gentlemen, it is such a great pleasure to welcome you all to the Challenges Annual Forum 2026, and thank you all for being here. We are particularly pleased to welcome colleagues and partners from across the United Nations, member states, regional organizations, academia, and civil society. Bringing these perspectives together is at the heart of the forum and what makes these conversations so valuable. It is also a pleasure to welcome you to the Economic and Social Council Chamber. This room has a special connection to Sweden, actually. It was designed by the architect Sven Markelius and gifted from Sweden to the United Nations. And as ECOSOC marks its 80th anniversary this year, it feels particularly appropriate that we are gathering here to reflect on how the United Nations continues to adapt to a changing world. If you look up, you may notice that the ceiling is deliberately unfinished with its air vents exposed. It was designed like that to remind us of the work in the United Nations, that it is never finished. I think that's a fitting image for our discussions today. The United Nations has evolved over the past 80 years in response to the changing international environment. And that same spirit of adaptation is needed as we consider the role of the UN peace operations today. At a time of growing geopolitical tensions and pressures on multilateralism, international peace and security cannot be secured by countries acting alone. They require cooperation between member states, the United Nations, regional organizations, host countries and other partners. Peace operations are, in many ways, multilateralism in action. They bring countries and institutions together around a shared effort to prevent conflict, protect people and support political processes. For Sweden, this commitment has deep roots. It is closely connected to the legacy of Folke Bernadotte, the first United Nations mediator. Following repeated requests, Bernadotte helped secure the development of the UN observers in the field. laying the foundation for the United Nations Trust Supervision Organization, the first UN peace operation. His contribution was an early example of the United Nations developing practice approaches to the challenges of its time through dialogue, mediation and cooperation. That legacy continues today through the Folke Bernadotte Academy, which works with peace, security and conflict prevention, and is also the home to the Challenges Forum International Secretariat. And this year, we have another important milestone to celebrate: 30 years of the Challenges Forum partnership. For three decades, the partnership has brought together policymakers, practitioners and experts to challenge established thinking and exchange experience on how peace operations can become even more efficient. We welcome the review on the future of all forms of the UN peace operation as an opportunity to take stock and consider how the UN's engagement for peace can adapt to a changing international environment. This engagement should help advance political solutions that also lasts. And for Sweden, this includes strengthening their credibility and legitimacy, improving operational effectiveness and impact, and advancing greater integration, coordination, and partnership. But adaptation is not only about peace operations themselves. It is also about political conditions, partnerships, and political commitment that is needed to make effective action possible. The transition to a new Secretary General therefore offers an important moment to consider how we can lay the ground for effective peace operations in the years ahead, and how Member States and other partners can support in that effort. And the ECHOSOC itself can also offer this final reminder. The curtain behind me is called the Dialogos, and its design represents dialogue as the foundation of democratic discourse. And I hope that the idea will guide our discussions today to listen as well as to speak, to change established ideas, to exchange perspectives and to seek common ground. Because the work of the United Nations is never finished, our task is to continue building, adapting and improving the multilateral tools we have to respond to the challenges of our time. So with that, I am very pleased to open the Challenges Annual Forum 2026, and I invite you to begin the dialogue. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much, Ambassador. And now I invite Her Excellency Christina Marcus Lassen, Permanent Representative of Denmark to the United Nations. Ambassador, the floor is yours.

Thank you very much and good afternoon, everyone. It's wonderful to see you all. And also from my side, great pleasure to welcome you all to the Challenges Annual Forum, which is co-hosted by Denmark, Sweden, and Pakistan, three of our favorite colleagues on this topic and many others, at this very critical moment for United Nations peace operations and in this very beautifully Swedish-decorated room. Today's theme captures both the urgency and the challenges we face and the opportunity before us. Over the past seven decades, the enduring relevance and value of peace operations has been proved time and time again. As an elected member of the Security Council, Denmark has seen this work firsthand over the past two years. In the valuable reporting on dynamic situations, in the confidence building and good offices efforts to reduce tensions, in the daily protection of civilians from violence. To put it plainly, our belief in this tool has only been strengthened by our experience on the Council. But we have also had a front-row seat to the increasing difficulties it faces. Conflicts are becoming more complex and increasingly regional in character. Political processes stall. Host countries' consent becomes contested, while expectations of missions remain high, even as resources shrink. Our experience reinforces a fundamental lesson: peace operations cannot substitute for political solutions, but they remain essential instruments for supporting them, both before and after. The Secretary-General's review of all forms of UN peace operations comes at an important juncture. It invites us to look beyond traditional institutional distinctions and to consider how the UN can make better use of its full peace and security toolbox, from prevention, mediation and good offices to special political missions, peacekeeping and partnerships with regional organizations. The question is not simply what peace operations should look like in the future. It is how we ensure that they remain politically relevant, operationally effective and capable of responding to changing circumstances. And I'll just quote three priorities that stand out from our experience. First, and coming a little bit back to what I just said, we must put politics at the center of mission design, review, and adaptation. Mandates must be grounded in realistic political strategies with clear objectives and a credible understanding of what missions can deliver. The Security Council must recognize that the path from conflict to peace is often not linear. There may be setbacks or needs to change direction. It must be willing to adjust its approach when circumstances change. In other words, we must avoid the situation in which missions are expected to implement mandates that no longer reflect realities on the ground. To do that, though, we need information and data from the Secretariat. This means a more proactive use of the Secretary-General's good offices, regular early warning analysis, as well as timely fact-finding and options for reconfigurations. And we need comprehensive and integrated planning across components at all levels, while we ensure that agencies, funds, and programs have the necessary capacity to complement missions. Instruments such as the Peacebuilding Fund are important to this end. Second, ambition must be matched by genuine political backing and resources. We cannot ask missions to protect civilians, monitor ceasefires, and facilitate political processes while denying them the support, capabilities, and predictable financing these tasks require. We similarly cannot sit idly by if there are attacks or crimes against them. This is an area where Denmark, in great partnership with Pakistan, has brought to the forefront through the recent unanimous adoption of resolution 2823 on accountability of crimes against peacekeepers. The current liquidity crisis makes this especially urgent. Efficiency matters, but savings must not hollow out operational effectiveness or compromise the safety of personnel and civilians. These lessons also speak directly to the UN80 initiative. Reform should strengthen the UN's ability to deliver, not simply reduce its footprint. Third and finally, we must build a more adaptable and generally multilateral approach. As conflicts become more regionalized, closer cooperation with the African Union and other regional organizations is indispensable. Regional ownership, UN experience, and international support must reinforce one another while maintaining clear accountability and respect for international law. However, stronger regional ownership must complement, not dilute, the United Nations' responsibilities. So, colleagues, as we prepare to welcome a new Secretary-General in January, we have an opportunity now to look beyond the immediate horizon and consider not only what kind of peace operations the UN will need, but what kind of role the Secretary General should play. As we see it, we need leadership willing to take risk, build political consensus, and ready to make full use of the UN's instrument. This is also where the Challenges Forum has a particularly valuable role. By bringing together policymakers, practitioners, researchers, and civil society, discussions such as today's can help bridge the gap between strategic ambition and operational reality. So, we hope that we will use today's discussion to turn the current review into renewed momentum and to ensure that peace operations remain a credible, indispensable instrument for international peace and security. And in closing, and I will close now, I would just like to express our hope to be more closely engaged with the challenges for our partnership, including by being ready to host the next CAF in 2027 in beautiful Copenhagen, in collaboration with the Danish Institute for International Studies. I thank you.

Thank you very much, Ambassador. Very good news. And finally, I'm pleased to invite Guy Ryder, UN Under-Secretary-General for Policy. Guy, the floor is yours.

Thank you. Thank you very much, Benoit. Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen. Let me begin, as others have done, by thanking the Governments of Denmark, Pakistan and Sweden and the Challenges Forum for bringing us together for this important discussion. I also congratulate the forum on its 30 years of activities, which are of enormous value to the United Nations. Ladies and gentlemen, if you look at the title of this event, you will see that we are invited to turn the tide. It is worth pausing for a minute to think about what the tide is that we are trying to turn. There is plenty of evidence that the tide is taking us in the wrong direction. Geopolitical divisions are deepening, trust among member states is strained, conflicts are more protracted and fragmented, and they are increasingly internationalised. New technologies are transforming warfare, and civilians continue to bear the devastating consequences. And this tide seems to be acting on peace operations as well. And I think we need to acknowledge that the tide is running away from the consensus that previously underpinned the establishment of multidimensional UN peacekeeping operations in the 1990s and 2000s, that it's eroded amid growing geopolitical fragmentation. increasingly complex conflicts and growing host state assertions of sovereignty. It's a tide that probably does need to be turned. And if you look at the review that we are discussing today, it picks up this trend by talking about a growing paradox. This is the one quote I'm going to inflict upon you from the review itself. The review speaks of a growing paradox. On the one hand, Member States are united in supporting United Nations peace operations as critical for maintaining international peace and security. I expect to hear many of you say something similar this afternoon. On the other hand, says the review, the shifting positions and priorities of several Member States, including host states, have undermined support for peace operations and have led to a push to withdrawal of several missions. That's the paradox, perhaps, that lies at the center of what we have to look at today. Now, I think that the challenge before us today and the purpose of the review is not to preserve models developed for a past era. It is rather to ensure that United Nations peace operations remain effective in a more multipolar, fragmented, and contested international environment, where political consensus is harder to build, conflicts are more complex, and expectations often exceed available resources. The need, it seems to me at least, is to build tools which respond to current realities rather than inherited by institutional inertia. So what is required seems to be a fundamental reset in how we conceive, mandate, and deploy, and hold accountable our peace operations, and how those connect to the wider efforts of the United Nations. Of course, the review has a wealth of ideas in this regard. By my count, 47 recommendations, 15 priorities. But I think we need to see them in the context of this uniting idea of fundamental reset. One of the key ideas, I think, in the review comes, and it's been said already, to the primacy of politics. Peace operations, in the last instance, are political instruments. Their purpose is to support political solutions. not to substitute for them. Too often, missions have been expected to manage the consequences of conflicts without sufficient progress towards resolving their underlying causes. Reflections on the assumptions and approaches of peacekeeping need to continue beyond this review. Mandates have expanded, even as political consensus has weakened. Expectations have grown, whilst resources and political support have diminished. That is an inevitable recipe for a perception of underachievement. We need to confront that mismatch. The primacy of politics must guide our decisions from the outset, when to engage, which instruments to deploy and what mandates to establish. That approach demands more of all of us. At its core, the review reminds us that the most effective peace operations is often the one that never becomes necessary because preventive diplomacy, mediation and peacemaking succeeded in their job. And our collective ambition must therefore not only be to improve peace operations, but to reduce the number of situations in which large scale deployments become the only available option. Member States need to work to build and sustain political consensus that gives peace operations purpose and legitimacy. And of course, the Secretariat must support that consensus through frank analysis, credible options, and sustained diplomatic engagement. Colleagues, political space does not simply emerge. It must be created, nurtured, and defended. and this means investing more seriously in prevention, diplomacy, mediation and peacemaking. Let me conclude by saying that no institutional reform, not even that suggested in the ambitious recommendations of this review, can compensate for the absence of political commitment from member states. Security Council must provide clear, realistic and adaptable mandates backed by sustained political engagement. Host states and troop and police contributing countries must be genuine partners through a mission's life cycle, and regional organisations must remain central to our efforts, including through the opportunities offered by Security Council resolution 2719. We must also ensure that our ambitions are matched by the means to deliver them. Ladies and gentlemen, let's see if we can turn the tide. There is a good Shakespearean quote from Julius Caesar, a bad source when you're talking about peace and security, says that there is a tide in the affairs of men which taken at the flood lead to fortune, but if we miss them, we lose our venture. The United Nations cannot afford to lose the venture of its peace operations. Thank you.

Thank you very much. With those opening perspectives, let us turn to our first substantive conversation on turning the tide. Over the past year, peace operations have faced increasingly difficult choices as resources have declined and missions have been required to adjust their size, posture, and priorities. And this raises some fundamental questions. What can we realistically expect peace operations to deliver under the current conditions? What are the consequences of the choices now being made? And what is at stake when multilateral responses are constrained? To facilitate this conversation, I am pleased to welcome Jenna Russo, Director of Research and Head of the Brian Urquhart Centre for Peace Operations at the International Peace Institute. Jenna, over to you, please.

Thank you so much, Benoit, and thank you to the organizers for having me here today to moderate our first substantive session on Turning the Tide: Peace Operations at a Crossroads. I think for most of the last 20 years that I've been working on peace operations, we're almost always talking about how peace operations are at a turning point of some sort. But it does seem that the last several years and this past year in particular have brought some of those discussions to a new height. Excuse me, and I don't need to reiterate all of the things, all of the challenges that were mentioned in the opening remarks today, but a combination of operational and political challenges against the backdrop of significantly dwindling resources have made mandate implementation significantly more difficult and putting a lot of strain on missions. And as we've heard from mission personnel in the last year or so, we are far beyond the conversation of doing more with less and really at a point of needing to rethink how we're approaching UN operations. And so that's some of what we're going to get into today on this first panel. To start our time today, we will first hear a video message from SRSG Anita Kiki Gabeijo from the UN mission in South Sudan, and then I'll introduce our other panelists.

29 a.m. When the sharp crack of gunfire begins ricocheting across the landscape. Soon after, grenades are launched in quick succession.

The village is under attack.

Racing to respond are Mongolian peacekeepers serving in remote Abyom Nom in South Sudan. Civilians fleeing for their lives head straight to the one place they know they will find sanctuary.

The United Nations base.

Immediately opening the gates, the peacekeepers hustle the scared community inside. They hunker down behind the perimeter walls as the Mongolian troops secure the area. The priority is to establish a protective zone against the imminent threat and provide comfort to the traumatized survivors. Among the 1,000 people who take refuge are dozens of wounded, children, women, the elderly. No one was exempt from the indiscriminate violence. Dignity is also provided to those who cannot be saved. When day breaks, the peacekeepers head out on patrol to assess the security situation. The devastation is clear in the lives lost, but also.

In the overwhelming challenge of recovery and rebuilding in a place where people already had almost nothing.

This is what happened in Abyom Nom on 1st of March 2026. But it's not a new phenomenon. It's an everyday experience in a country plagued by persistent conflict, fueled by a stubbornly deadlocked peace process. As an impartial partner, the United Nations stands with the people of South Sudan as they navigate the difficult journey from conflict to peace, protecting civilians, supporting the safe delivery of humanitarian aid to millions in need, promoting human rights, progressing peace. In carrying out this life-saving and life-changing work, the mission is facing mounting.

Challenges at a time when peacekeeping is needed more than ever.

Denials of access to conflict-affected areas, budget cuts that have seen bases close across the country, and severe reductions in peacekeepers are profoundly impacting the delivery of much needed support for the world's newest nation.

An impact that is felt most by those we serve.

Despite the challenges, peacekeepers persevere in the efforts to project their presence to where it is needed most and to secure the peace that the people of South Sudan have waited far too long for. Back in Abyom, amidst the terror and chaos, there's a glimmer of light. A young woman suddenly goes into early labor. Right by her side are the peacekeepers who help usher this new life into the world, safely delivering a baby girl into her mother's arms. Their hope is that she will never again experience the horror in which she was born.

And will have the chance she deserves to live freely and safely in a peaceful and prosperous South Sudan.

Good afternoon. I am Kiki Gbeho, Special Representative of the Secretary-General and Head of the United Nations Mission in South Sudan. Unfortunately, I am unable to join you in person today. Before I begin, you have just seen footage of peacekeepers from Mongolia responding to an attack on civilians in Unity State in March. That day, fewer than 50 peacekeepers helped save the lives of more than 1,200 civilians. They stood their ground in the face of danger and did what peacekeepers do at their best: they protected vulnerable people. What makes the Abiyonum events particularly relevant is that only months earlier, we had come very close to closing that location as part of painful measures driven by liquidity constraints. We ultimately kept the base open, although with fewer personnel and greater risk. Had we made a different decision, many more lives might have been lost. That story captures the reality many peace operations face today. Across many missions, political, security, and humanitarian demands are growing while resources are shrinking. In South Sudan, these pressures are compounded by preparations for elections, ongoing local violence, and a more volatile region. The conflict in the Sudan continues to affect South Sudanese daily. Instability does not respect borders.

In.

UNMISS, we have had to contend simultaneously with financial constraints and significant changes to our mandate, both of which occurred.

In quick succession.

From the field, the consequences are very concrete. fewer patrols, reduced presence, diminished early warning, and slower responses. First, reduced resources mean reduced presence. And in peacekeeping, presence matters. Presence is often the intervention itself. When we are present, we deter violence, build confidence, gather information, and create space for humanitarian actors, political, and communal dialogue. When our presence is reduced, our visibility diminishes, and with it, our ability to identify risks before they become crisis. One lesson from South Sudan is simple. We cannot protect what we cannot see. In areas where field offices have closed, our visibility of human rights violations has inevitably declined, affecting accountability, prevention, and community confidence. Second, resource constraints force increasingly difficult trade-offs. Following the killing of civilians in Ayodhaya County, Jhungle State, In January 2026, our human rights team was unable to deploy immediately because of reduced staff and limited force protection. The investigation was delayed. Around the same time, force personnel was also needed to reinforce our presence in Nakobo, deep in an opposition-dominant area where over 110,000 people were displaced. When resources shrink while needs remain constant, missions must make choices. Where do we deploy? Which location receives protection capacity? Which patrol takes priority? Which emerging risk can we monitor? And which one must wait? Operations today are increasingly an exercise in prioritization. These are not technical decisions, they are decisions about where we can accept risk or not. Third, resource constraints affect trust. When we reduce our footprint, communities understandably worry whether support and protection will still be there when they need it most. Maintaining that trust becomes more difficult, particularly where security gains can reverse quickly. South Sudan's preparations for elections illustrate another challenge. There are legitimate concerns about political conditions, institutional readiness, and the capacity needed to manage tensions during a sensitive period. Yet, At the very moment these pressures are growing, the mission's role is more limited, focused primarily on monitoring and reporting, while expectations in the host country remain much broader. So what can realistically be expected of peace operations under current conditions? Missions can continue to protect civilians, support political processes, facilitate humanitarian action, and provide early warning. But they cannot maintain the same geographic reach, responsiveness, and breadth of engagement. So how are we responding? Through ruthless prioritization, We are concentrating resources where risks to civilians are greatest and where we can have the most impact. We are pushed to do less, but to do less better. We are adapting our posture where we cannot maintain the same footprint. We increasingly rely on mobility, targeted deployments, and partnerships to retain situational awareness and remain connected to communities. This comes with risk. In August, in our drive to access parts of Jonglei State with perennial hotspots, three peacekeepers were sadly killed and six other United Nations personnel and national counterparts injured. None of these measures fully compensate for reduced resources. So what are the lessons? First, we must remain clear-eyed about what we can and cannot do. Peace operations can contribute towards creating political space, but not political will. Second, mandates and resources must be aligned. Missions need the capabilities and resources required to deliver what they are asked to do. An under-resourced mandate is a risk. Third, adaptation is no longer optional. It is a necessity. In UNMISS, we have reviewed our structures, resources, and posture to ensure they better match today's realities. Above all, we must never lose sight of the people we serve. When we discuss mandates, troop ceilings, and budgets, these decisions have consequences far beyond headquarters or negotiations. Their effects are felt in places like Bentiu, Akobo, Malakal, and many others where women, men, girls, and boys depend on an effective international presence at moments of greatest vulnerability. Let me conclude where I began. The footage you watched is not simply a story about courageous peacekeepers. It is a reminder of what is at stake. Peace operations are indeed at a crossroads. The question is not whether they must evolve, they must. The question is whether they will continue to be given the tools, resources, and political support necessary to protect civilians and create opportunities for sustained peace. How can we best align mandate, resources, and expectations? Because when peacekeeping succeeds, the result is often invisible, violence prevented, lives saved, and communities given the confidence to look towards the future. And from where I sit in South Sudan, that remains an investment worth making. I thank you.

A big thanks to SRSG Gabe Ho for that really touching video and a great way to kick off this discussion to really remind us about the human face behind all of this. This is not a theoretical exercise about models. This is really about individual human lives. And for many thousands of people, the presence of peacekeepers can be the difference between life and death. And we want to keep that always in our minds behind this conversation. So now to begin the panel part of our discussion, we're fortunate to have two people that have spent the last several months in the field gathering data on the impacts of the financial cuts on mandate implementation. So I'd like to start first with Lata Verma and Roger Hughes, who are both peace operations experts working with NORCAP. And you're both not only researchers, but also former peacekeepers. So you really bring a lot of direct experience to the topic. So we'll start with you first to provide some of your findings, and then we'll other panelists introduced to respond. Over to you.

Thank you so much, Jenna, and thank you to the governments of Sweden, Denmark, and Pakistan, as well as to the Challenges Annual Forum for bringing us together here today for these very important conversations. And of course, thank you to SRS G, BEHO, and all the colleagues on the ground protecting civilians every day. Roger and I were in South Sudan when Abyei had just happened, and we have the utmost respect for the courage, the dedication, and the commitment that our UNMISS colleagues demonstrated, saving over 1,000 lives. You have just seen and heard it put plainly and from the field itself. When you cut a mission's resources, you cut its presence, and with its presence goes its ability to protect, to respond, to see the danger coming. We will not repeat what the SRSG has just shown us, but we do come to amplify voices from the field. Our discussions about the future should always be rooted in the realities we currently face, so that we can find realistic ways forward towards more effective UN peace operations. missions that are fit for purpose.

So as mentioned, over the last couple of months, Lottie and I have sat in forward operating bases and we've sat in headquarters across.

Some of the missions in Africa, and we've liaised and corresponded with UNMISS in South Sudan, in UNISFA in Abyei, in MINUSCA in the Central African Republic, and also with MONUSCO in the Dr. Congo. Here we have conducted more than 500 consultations with our colleagues in the UN, including mission leadership, force commanders, community liaison officers, with soldiers on patrol, with IPOs and FPU colleagues, with human rights colleagues, and with national authorities, local communities, UN country team colleagues, and civil society. So we are here to represent the voices of our peacekeeping colleagues in the field, and we would like to shed some light on the critical issues that our peacekeeping missions are facing. How much is actually lost, and what that loss looks like from the ground? So let us begin with how much. A percentage cut to a mission's budget does not produce the same percentage cut to what the mission can actually do. It produces a much larger one. At almost every mission that we engaged with, colleagues told us that a 15% cut or a 25% cut was reducing capabilities and what they could actually deliver to a much greater extent, sometimes up to 75%. not 15%, not 25%, 75%. You've seen what the costs on the ground look like in the video, but I'd just like to dive a little bit deeper into that incident. Fewer than 50 peacekeepers, not a battalion, not a company, but fewer than 50 peacekeepers, saved over a thousand people's lives. That's because of them. When the attack came, the people ran, and these soldiers, just a handful of troops from the battalion that had been cut by 40% of its capability, short-staffed, stretched, they opened their gates, they took the people in, and they protected them from violence. And this is the very best of what peacekeeping is, and you saw it there with your own eyes. But the footage is only one instant and only part of the story. The same Mongolian battalion, after a drawdown that had repatriated more than 300 of their troops, is also responsible day in.

Day out, for protecting the Bentiu IDP camp of close to 100,000 people. That is the routine the clip cannot show.

And there is another point to highlight.

These soldiers could save the people who reach the gate, because they were still there.

What they can no longer do is stop the attack from happening. They could respond, and they did, but they could not prevent. That is the hidden half of every cut: not the end of protection, but the end of prevention. A small cut does something so large because it comes off the fuel and the travel, the things that led the force to move. A mission reduces its numbers and loses large parts of its reach, as you've heard from the SRS G. This is the pattern across the missions, and it exposes how protection really works. A peacekeeping mission cannot protect civilians if it cannot first protect itself or be present on the ground. These two are inseparable. As a force is stretched thinner and dinner, more of it goes to simply staying safe and keeping the mission running. And the share left free to move when civilians come under attack shrinks to a very thin margin, at times barely enough for one emergency at a time, with a second and a third elsewhere unanswered. Under a cut, that margin to react and to prevent is the first thing to go. And all of this travels under a word that does quiet work in our mission environments, transition. At three of the four missions that we engaged with, senior leaders used almost the same phrase unprompted. They are asked to plan for transitions, but what they are living is a drawdown. A transition is sequenced. A drawdown is cut with the word transition added afterwards. And every time we looked at who was meant to receive what a mission hands over, the receiver was not ready. National forces were not yet able. National authorities clearly said they were not ready to take over. We spoke to UN country teams who are desperate for resources and told us plainly that they cannot take it on. They do not have the capacity. In Bria, in the Central African Republic, where we were two weeks ago, the local authorities we sat with were desperate not for the mission to leave, but for it to stay. A handover with no one able to catch it is not a transition. What is at stake is losing the progress that we have made, the fragile stability that has been created over the last years. We risk the investments we have made in peace and are facing a significant risk of relapse into conflict in each of these settings, as we have seen in other contexts where we have left too soon. And this should concern everybody in this chamber and beyond. When a mission pulls back, protection, humanitarian access and basic stability contract at once.

And that space is open, and it doesn't stay open for long. We witnessed armed groups move into it in real time, informing communities that they would take over.

What the mission could no longer do. A war in one country is already spilling across borders. The same fighters turning up in theatres hundreds of kilometres apart. Pull out without a plan and a resourced handover, you don't save money, you export the crisis. This session also asks what is at stake for women, men, girls and boys. two main things we observed. First, for everyone who reads the reports that reach the Council, falling numbers are not good news by default. At every mission, as monitoring and access is cut, the recorded incidents fell with them. That doesn't mean that the situation is improving. It means that we don't have the resources to go out and verify what has happened. and this is a significant issue to recognize. In one country, recorded cases of gender-based violence halved in a single year, not because the violence has halved, but because the services that counted had closed. Do not mistake a gap in the reporting for peace and stability. Second, when the cuts come, the capacity that protects the most vulnerable is rarely the capacity with a voice in the room. So it goes early and it oftentimes goes quietly. The posts that lead the mission's responses to sexual violence sit frozen. They're unfilled. In places, we have seen UNPOL colleagues and military officers keeping community projects alive, paying out of their own pockets, as quick impact projects have significantly reduced or have been completely cut. But this is not a council of despair. We are not here to say spend more and change nothing. As the SRSG said, change is required and needed. The field is already showing what good can look like with almost nothing. Where protecting civilians and force protection now go hand in hand. And where integration, when it's planned and executed properly, We have witnessed the efficiencies and effective responses that are required.

Good practices exist.

For instance, a Ghanaian battalion now runs patrols that are led by women, not participated in by women but led by women, reaching communities that no one else can. In Manushka, properly integrated long-duration patrols now including local authorities and UN country team.

They're reaching populations that have never seen the state authorities. The people on the ground are not only absorbing the crisis, they are inventing the solutions.

And they do this at a cost that we rarely name. They are asked, as we heard from the SRS G, to do more with less, but they're also doing this in more danger, some of them working through a live Ebola outbreak, and they still open the gates, they still run the patrols, and they still protect civilians. Their safety is being stripped away by new and lethal threats that are evolving faster than our ability to counter them. Drones, above all, have killed peacekeepers and UN colleagues in several mission contexts, and the means to protect them from these threats are not yet in place. We ask our women and men to walk toward danger so that others do not have to do it. The very least we owe them is the ability to protect themselves while they protect everyone else. Safety and security cannot be the line we cut first. It has to be the line we hold.

So let us start to close where the SSG also closed. She said peace operations are at a crossroads.

And that the real question is not whether they must change, because they must. but whether they will be given the tools, the resources and the political support to protect civilians and build a peace that lasts.

She asked how we align mandates, resources and expectations.

From the field, the answer is not complicated. Match the mandate to the means or change the means to match the mandate, but do not write an ambitious mandate over a hollowed mission and expect it delivered. Put the safety of peacekeepers first, not last. They cannot protect anyone when they are not safe. And require for every cut an honest account of what it will stop a mission from doing. We need to know what we can do and what we can no longer do, to resource what you have mandated. and root the design, as we heard from the Ambassador, the review and the adaptation of missions in the political. A peace operation is a political instrument. Yes, it is. And as SRG Gabo said, it can contribute to the political space, but it cannot create the political will. In the end, that space has to be filled by the host state. Lasting protection and any real handover rests on its political will as much as its capacity. Where that will is withheld, as we see in some areas where is narrowed, access is denied, no budget closes those gaps, but that's not a reason to leave. It's a reason to continue investing in both the political space while strengthening the missions. And one more thing that really should hit hard in this room, that when peace operations succeed, the result is actually often invisible.

And that is exactly the trap.

A cut looks like painless because what it quietly takes away is the attack that never comes. the massacre that no one reads about, the child who grows up because a patrol was there. You cannot photograph prevention, so the easiest saving in the world is always the one that is quietly keeping people alive. So yes, let us turn the tide, but as USG Ryder just said, we need to turn the tide in the right direction. There is a difference between reform and starvation, and we must not let the two be confused. One sets missions up to succeed, the other sets them up to fail by cutting their operational effectiveness and then calls the failure inevitable. As RSG, Gabel, and the Ambassador said, peace operations remain an investment worth making, and we fully agree. Change the tide, by all means, but change it so that the people who depend on these missions and our colleagues who serve in these missions are not the ones left under the water. We thank you. Thank you so much for that. and for helping us to have a really solid base of evidence from the field for the discussion. We did get a little bit of a late start, but to make sure that we don't take over the entire afternoon, I'm going to kindly ask the rest of the panelists to stick to about five to six minutes for their interventions. So next, I'm happy to introduce another colleague who can bring additional perspective from the field. And we're fortunate to have Leonardo Santos Simao, SRSG from the UN Office for West Africa and the Sahel, joining us online. Mr. Simao, from where you sit in UNOWA, how are you navigating priorities and some of the trade-offs that we've already heard discussed in your environment? Over to you. Mr. Samao, can you hear me? We don't have connection. Okay, then we'll come back to him if we get connection. But then next, I'm very happy to turn to our two member state representatives to provide a perspective from where you are both sitting. So we're pleased to welcome Ambassador Jadoon from the Permanent Mission of Pakistan and Ambassador Jeff Bartos from the Permanent Mission of the U.S. I think we did a coin toss and we're going to start with Ambassador Jadoon and then I'll turn over to you.

Thank you very much, Jenna. I thank the organizers, the Challenges Forum, as well as our co-hosts, Sweden and Denmark, for organizing this wonderful event. Jenna, your remarks are always very insightful on peacekeeping, but today the perspectives that we heard from Lotte and Raj were particularly valuable and very moving also. Pakistan approaches this discussion from a unique experience. Over the past six decades, more than 270,000 Pakistani peacekeepers have served under the UN flag. 183 of them have made the ultimate sacrifice. We are also a host country to one of the UN's oldest peacekeeping missions, the United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan. So our perspective is shaped both by contributing to peacekeeping and by hosting a mission in addition to our policy level engagement here in New York at the UN. That experience also suggests that we should take a longer view. Like you yourself said, peacekeeping has never followed a steady upward graph. It has expanded, contracted, and reinvented itself repeatedly over the last six decades, responding to geopolitics and challenges of the times. The observer missions of the 1940s were followed by multidimensional operations in the '60s. protection of civilian mandates, ceasefire monitoring, support to election and state institutions, and increasingly sophisticated military and civilian capabilities. There was also a period of contraction during the Cold War peak, and subsequently an exponential growth in missions after the Cold War ended. So this period of contraction should not be seen as the first turning point in peacekeeping's history, and it should also not automatically be treated as its direction of travel into decline necessarily. The present financial pressures are real and serious, but we should be careful not to allow a liquidity crisis, no matter however acute, to become the organizing principle for the future of peacekeeping. The architecture we have today took more than six decades to build. It rests on the contributions of over 150 member states. troops and police, assessed contributions, training institutions, logistics, force generation systems, command structures, and countries hosting missions. Once those capabilities and relationships are hollowed out, they simply cannot be recreated when the next crisis demands them. I will bring in to point on focused mandates. These are important, but a focused mandate should mean a mission built around a coherent political strategy with clear priorities and resources commensurate with the tasks assigned to it. It should not simply become shorthand for a smaller footprint. There is no one-size-fits-all model. Numerous success stories of peacekeeping, like missions in Namibia, Cambodia, Mozambique, El Salvador, Liberia, Cote d'Ivoire, and Sierra Leone, were all different missions. MINUSCA today also shows that, in the right circumstances, a multidimensional peacekeeping mission can achieve success for protection, political purposes, and extension of state authority. Future missions should therefore be designed around the needs on the ground, not predetermined by how much resources the UN has at that given point. There is a need to distinguish financial pressure from political legitimacy. I would caution against the assumption that political support for peacekeeping is eroding. The evidence points in the opposite direction. The Special Committee on Peacekeeping Operations, C-34, again reached consensus on this year's report on recommendations for peacekeeping. The Denmark-Pakistan Security Council Resolution 2823 on accountability for crimes against peacekeepers was adopted unanimously and attracted 153 co-sponsors, a record number for any Security Council resolution. It shows an extraordinary demonstration of interest and support across the wider UN membership. The real question is not whether peacekeeping is in a decline. It is whether we can preserve, in this difficult time, the institutional capacity, capabilities, and political confidence built over decades needed to use it when the next situation requires it. It is clear that peacekeeping must adapt. It must become more agile, more technologically capable, and more responsive to changing conflict dynamics, and also more efficient and cost-effective too. Reform is necessary, but its purpose should be to make peacekeeping more efficient, more effective, and more usable, thinking about ways to do things more innovatively. It should strengthen the Security Council's ability to employ peacekeeping as one of its principal instruments for maintaining international peace and security. Without credible peacekeeping capacity, the Council loses much of its ability to translate decisions in New York into presence and influence on the ground. to monitor ceasefires, deter escalation, protect civilians, and create space for political processes. The objective of reform, therefore, should be to strengthen this instrument for the future, not to hollow it out in response to what may prove to be temporary financial pressures. Allow me to conclude once again by thanking the Challenges Forum for partnering with us to organize this event and bring together such a wide array of sterling expertise for this dialogue. Thank you very much.

Thank you so much, Ambassador. Ambassador Bartos, turning to you next. We've heard a lot of talk today about trade-offs, ruthless prioritization, and there have been a lot of calls from member states to slim down and take some form of more targeted approaches, and yet many missions are dealing with really complex crises. So looking ahead, how do you see the role of peace operations moving forward against these complex settings? Over to you.

Is this on? I can speak without a mic, actually. I want to thank my colleagues, my distinguished colleagues here, of course, from Sweden and from Denmark, from Pakistan for hosting, and thank you for moderating. Perhaps the most dangerous thing you can say at the UN, I've learned over the last year, is I'll be brief, because that seldom means that you actually will be brief. But given that I have five minutes, I'm going to throw my notes out and just touch on a couple of things that we could perhaps continue another time. Utont in the book Peacemaker about Utont in 1964, I forget which page it was on, I just read it recently. In 1964, the UN had peacekeeping operations, missions in Kashmir, in Gaza, in the West Bank, in DRC. The UN was on the brink of insolvency. Not because of the United States, because a different member state didn't see fit to, that the UN was not meeting its essential purpose. 62 years ago, I imagine there was conversations something like this, and 62 years hence, there will be conversations about the challenges faced by peacekeeping, by the multilateral work that we all endeavor to do. And so I think I just wanna level set that The challenges we face now are not unique, and the challenges our future generations face will not be unique. These are challenges that come with resources, priorities, and getting 193 countries at this time back in 1964, less countries, to agree on priorities and resources. So I think that's important to level set on that. And I'll also state, I think, what I try to live up to in my work, which is that the work we do here in New York, member states and secretariat alike, must honor the work that the brave women and men in the field do, the civilians they work to protect, and the taxpayers who fund all of this work. And so I don't want to get into a back and forth because that's not the purpose of today's panel, but I can't say that I reject because I haven't seen your data, but I do not accept the notion that 15% cut leads to 50, 75% of inability to do mission work. I don't accept it, although I would look at the data. On the other side of that, taking that same logic, a 5% increase, would we have that much more success in achieving the missions, and I think it's something that we should explore. I respect you going out to the field, I respect the work you do. I went out to see MINUSCA and MONUSCO earlier this year, in addition to some of the great work that's being done, not only at Yunnan, but also up in Kakuma in northwest Kenya. So I salute you for going out into the field. I would like to learn a little bit more about your findings. But let me get back to what I just said. The work we do here in New York, and why do I say that, South Sudan is a perfect example. Because earlier this year on the mandate renewal, member states came together on the council. If memory serves, there were no votes against the streamlining of that mandate. There may have been some abstentions. I'm looking over at Christina. I think there were maybe two abstentions. So maybe it was 1302. The secretariat started to do what it's supposed to do, which is to recost the mission. in line with the Streamline mandate. I mean, this was moving along the way things are supposed to move on. And five days before the expiration of the peacekeeping budget, let's say June 25th of this year, all of a sudden, the bureaucracy, and I don't want to use specific names, although privately, I'm very happy to tell you the story, but the bureaucracy sprung up and worked overtime to stop any of the streamlining and the budget reductions that were in accordance with the Streamline. And then member states, including the United States. Many of my colleagues worked overnight for five straight nights. Now, again, getting back to the theme of the work we do here must honor the work of the women and men in the field and the taxpayers who fund this work and the people that we're trying to protect and save. We did everything we're supposed to do as member states. The secretary did not want to see that happen. We had to fight for five straight nights overnight, overtime. To bring back. those streamlining cuts that we worked hard to do. And ultimately, the budget that was passed by consensus with 193 countries happened. We should not have had to spend five additional nights redoing the work that one portion of the secretariat did that another part of the secretariat fought like hell to stop. So that can't happen again. We said that on June 30th. That can never happen again because this is really hard work, and we don't always get it right. And we come together many times a year to adjust and to hear briefings and to see what's happening and try to get it right in these mandates. So looking ahead, I just want to point ahead now. The United States, we believe that the UN has great potential. We have said that. Our president has said that two years in a row. He made mention this year of Security Council resolutions. He made mention of reforms that have been achieved over the prior 12 months. So we are committed to reforming this institution to help it meet its essential purpose of promoting and maintaining international peace and security. But I do not think it is helpful to the broader mission. Forget about my reaction to it. I don't think it's helpful to the broader mission when propaganda video plus statements about the doom and gloom around what happens when you try to match resources with realities on the ground. So I think it's an important conversation. It's one I'd welcome to have individually or in smaller groups. But it can't be that an institution can't reform, that you can't cut a single dollar. That can't be the operating principle of the United Nations. It can't be the operating principle of any organization. So I would submit to you, colleagues, friends, everyone who's interested in this, reform is happening. 193 member states have come together on multiple budgets. We can do this work, and looking forward, we have a very broad and a very, I think, very smart reform agenda, which we're happy to discuss with anybody here, but in closing, I wanna close where I started. The work we do, all of us, must honor the work in the field and the people who pay the bills, the taxpayers from all of our member states, and if we lose sight of that, we're going to get ourselves into a really bad spot. So I thank you.

Thank you, Ambassador Bartos. To round off our panel, next I'll turn to David Akong, Commandant of the Kofi Annan Peacekeeping Training Center. Mr. Akong, thank you for joining us. And now from a TCC perspective, How do you see some of the constraints and the evolving demands on peace operations and what do they mean in practice? And how can we try to align some of our current realities with scarce resources while also preserving the capabilities that really matter most to the missions on the ground? Over to you, sir.

Thank you, Jeanna, for the opportunity to add my voice to the dialogue going on right now. Before I start, let me also add my voice to thank Denmark, Pakistan, Sweden for putting this program together and the chairman of the CAPS Secretariat for very good organization here. I think before I do respond to your question, I just want to say that I'm sitting as the head of the Kufuor International Peacekeeping Training Center. And earlier this morning, I made some remarks that The review itself has give some kind of strategic, the way we look at the review, there are certain opportunities we can grab from, strategic opportunities that we can grab and shape the way we do business, especially at the training center. But coming into this meeting, I'm also looking at myself as a man in uniform, an officer for that matter, and also belonging to a troop contributing country. So I tried to, you know, balance the two. And the points I have in front of me actually goes to reaffirm some of the earlier, almost all the earlier points that have been raised by our first two speakers, Lord and colleague, on the fact that, so I will just be very brief on that before I respond quickly to the question here. And of course, the clip that we watched. That everything that has been said, the very concerns that the men and women in charge of our soldiers and men back home have also raised here, talking about the reaffirming of privacy of politics and prevention, preventive diplomacy, where they need to emphasize on the sustainable peace that cannot be achieved through military or security measures alone. But of course, we have to look at overall UN mission being anchored in political strategies, preventive diplomacy, mediation, peacemaking, and everything that we've seen here. The other one is the issue of, of course, we talk about giving them the job and the fact that the They don't have that predictable funding to get a job done and that funding to sustain them in the mission area. We talk about 2017, 19, and the fact that in itself is something that we need to look at as we see not only a UN operation coming up, but we are looking at more UN, AU, and other regional bodies coming into the space and how we can take advantage of perhaps equipping our troops better, preparing them very well so that they can be able to do their job. One of the things that in this morning, earlier session, I had to talk about, why don't we let them just do their job and and their mandate is not to protect civilians. For for for us in uniform and most of the people here can identify with that. We always talk about the hearts and minds. You cannot get a job done without winning the hearts and minds of people. And therefore you cannot do the job without taking care of the civilians. So for us, it's an implied task. Whether you give it to us or not, it's something we have to do because we have to take care of the men and women and for that matter, by extension, protection of civilians. So these are some of the things that, the issues that have been raised. And of course, how the challenges faced, especially when it comes to host country ownership and consent, where Peace operations should be doing more closely, working closely with national authorities and local communities, because when that does not work, there are great challenges for the troops on the ground. It makes, therefore, the amount very difficult. So let me quickly now come to the question that you asked, and I'll just be brief on that since we don't have too much time. So just building on the previous speakers, let me just say that for where we sit as a training institution, The crossroads we have faced in peace operation is for us to require us to rethink how we prepare the people who serve in these places. Clearly, we need to adapt, we need to change the things we do because the future peace operations is not what we are faced with now, looking at all the challenges that we are talking about. And therefore, we have to begin to ask ourselves, how can the missions, what Let me take that again. It affects the mission and the way the mission operates, how they deliver on their mandate, and ultimately, how that affects the women and boys and girls that they come across within the community. The challenges we face are actually very complex. Personnel, as I'll be highlighted by some speakers, earlier speakers, People are deployed in very difficult and complex environments, dangerous, and they are being asked to do more than traditional peacekeeping, as we all know. And this raises a fundamental concern that they have to deal with asymmetric threats, misinformation, improvised explosive devices, organized armed groups, and difficult political environment. Yet sometimes the mandated equipment, intelligence, and resources that they are given or available to them do not evolve at the same pace. So as this is, this comes down to a very practical question. Are we giving our peacekeepers what they need to do the job? We are asking them to do clear mandate, the training that they need, adequate equipment, timely intelligence, mobility, and all the other things that will help to protect them and ensure the welfare of the personnel in the field. So, yes, looking as we talk about turning the tide, these are the challenges that the troops in the field are facing, and this is what they keep bringing out. We are ready to do the job, but the challenges make it very difficult to actually execute on the mandate. And this is a discussion that we have to keep having and talking about. My contribution. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much. Unfortunately, we're not going to have time to go back because we are already a bit over the session. I do recognize that CAF is supposed to be a place for open conversation, for very frank dialogue, for disagreement, frankly. It's clear that not everyone on this panel has the same perception, and that is in the spirit of CAF, for people to be able to speak honestly, and we don't want people to just come with clean and pretty talking points. But I will say as my final word that the opening video we saw, I don't want to do disjustice to the people whose lives that we saw on that video. That's real people's lives. Those are real civilians. Real people died that day in that attack. And so the one thing I want to say is whether we disagree with mission leaders and data and budgets and mandate approaches, that we don't lump in those human beings with the disagreements over whether certain things are propaganda or not propaganda. So above all, let's honor the people on the ground, the real lives of human beings, and then all of the rest of it. We can continue to debate and disagree on and continue forward.

I get a right of reply on that, which is I obviously was not talking about the brave women and men protecting the civilians or the brave civilians who were fleeing for their lives. I'm specifically talking about an SRSG who wasn't here but recorded that video and did not discuss the very things that I discussed. And that, if she's going to discuss those things, she ought to be pointing out the hard work that was done to streamline that mandate and the fact that we member states had to work so hard to give back that which we streamlined. I think it is a very clear difference, certainly was not talking about at all. I mean, I made it very clear in my remarks what I was talking about.

All right, that's the end of the session. Thanks, everybody.

Thank you so much, Jenna, and thank you to all the speakers too for a candid and very timely discussion. We will now take a short break. Coffee and tea will be served in the Vienna Cafe, which you will find when you take the elevators down to level 1B. And please exit in the back on the top there, where ushers will provide you with a ticket. 00 PM, 1500. So please be here in time. Thank you. Welcome back, everyone, from a short coffee break. and I think lots of participants are still making their way back in the room. But let me start by welcoming you back. Our second session turns to an issue that is central to the future of peace operations, host country consent and cooperation. Consent has become increasingly contested in recent years. So the question is how we can strengthen and share accountability across all of the actors involved.

Excellencies, colleagues, I am honored to address this forum, and I regret that I'm unable to.

That will be the next speaker. And he's giving his consent. So to share accountability across all actors, clarify mutual expectations and responsibilities, and ultimately build more reciprocal and politically grounded partnerships that can sustain consent over time. Building on the idea of a strategic compact, as suggested in the review of all forms of peace operations, a compact between the Security Council, the UN Secretariat and host states, we will explore what this could mean in practice and how it can remain a meaningful political process rather than becoming a static or overly prescriptive agreement. I have the pleasure of moderating this session, and we are very fortunate to have a range of perspectives around the table. On my right is Ambassador Lewis G. Brown II, Permanent Representative of Liberia. Welcome, Ambassador. On my left, we have Ambassador Tomihiro Mikanagi, the Deputy Permanent Representative of Japan. Welcome, Ambassador. On my far left, we have Fatima Maiga. She is a founding member and president of the Coalition des Femmes Leaders Nord-Sud et Centre du Mali. To my far right, we have Ms. Maya Ragab. She is the head of programs at the Cairo International Center for Conflict Resolution, Peacekeeping, and Peacebuilding. And to my very far left, we have Professor Charles Hunt. He's a professor of international relations at RMIT University and a senior fellow at the UN University for Policy Research. Thank you all for joining us here this afternoon. As you have seen, we will begin with a pre-recorded message from the Under-Secretary-General for Peace Operations, Mr. Jean-Pierre Lacroix.

Excellencies, colleagues. I am honored to address this forum, and I regret that I'm unable to be with you in person. UN peacekeeping remains one of the international community's most important and adaptable instruments to help countries move from conflict towards peace. Yet we must recognize the challenging strategic and operational environment in which our missions operate. In this context, the Secretary-General's review on the future of all forms of United Nations peace operations which was released last August, identifies concrete ways in which the Secretariat and Member States can enhance their effectiveness. This includes adapting peace operations to the current realities, while working towards greater political unity in support of their work. Peace operations can succeed only where fundamental political and operational conditions are in place.

Among these.

Host state consent and cooperation remain indispensable. Consent should not be understood as just a one-time expression of approval at the moment of deployment. It must be substantive, sustained, and translated into practical cooperation throughout the life of a mission. As a priority under Action for Peacekeeping, missions have made tangible progress in recent years in fostering constructive host state relations. But the Security Council can and should also play a more active role. That is why the review recommends that following the establishment or renewal of a mandate, the Security Council consider a political mechanism or compact for the Council, the Secretariat and the host state. This would serve to regularly reaffirm at the political level the shared commitments and obligations concerning the mission's strategic purpose, its key capabilities, and the operational conditions for successful mandate delivery. Structured and transparent dialogue with host states and troop and police contributing countries would reinforce this process. Such a political mechanism would not be a one-time document, but rather an ongoing process of engagement to create greater buy-in from key stakeholders to help identify disagreements before they have become restrictions, to rebuild agreement when expectations diverge, and to periodically examine whether political consent, Council objectives, and missions capabilities remain aligned. The aim of a political mechanism or compact would not be to alter the Security Council's authority to establish mandates. Nor would it be intended to privilege one party's interests over those of others. Of course, every context is different. We must recognize that a written compact may not always be the right tool. In some settings, questions over national sovereignty are heavily contested. In some cases, a whole state may also lack the capacity to exercise authority consistently across its territory or to deliver on commitments made at the political level. These realities reinforce the need to treat consent not as a binary condition, but as a political relationship that requires continuous attention, dialogue and management. The Challenges Forum offers precisely the kind of candid dialogue that can help to fully consider this recommendation and how it might be translated into practice. I thank the Challenges Forum and the Ford Cabernett Academy for commissioning an informative background paper on this issue. I look forward to your ideas and your continued partnership.

Thank you, EUSG Lacroix. We will now turn to Professor Hunt, as you've heard, the author of the background paper for this particular session. So, Charlie, please, over to you.

Thanks very much, Benoit. Good afternoon, everyone. My thanks also to the organizers, to Pakistan, Denmark, Sweden, and the Challenges, of course, for organizing it and inviting me to write this background paper. Happy anniversary to Challenges. I've been connected one way or another with Challenges for about 20 of those 30 years, so I'm delighted that this is actually the first time I've contributed a background paper. As we've heard already, in many ways the nature of consent has changed in recent years, but certainly its erosion, the deterioration in different ways across a range of different mission settings has become arguably one of the defining challenges confronting contemporary peace operations. And it was great to see that this was taken up explicitly in the review, and I'll touch on some of those recommendations. But with my short presentation, really, I want to try and draw out the four of the key findings of my paper relating to resetting or rethinking, perhaps, host country consent and cooperation. And perhaps in the discussion that ensues, I can get into some of the recommendations that I've put forward there as well about how to make that more concrete. But first, and this goes slightly different to some of what's been said already, I think we need to take seriously a broader conception of consent. Too often, consent is treated primarily as a relationship between the UN, different parts of the UN, and host governments. Clearly, host state consent remains fundamental. We know the reasons why. This is also a state-based intergovernmental organization. And there's much to do to improve that partnership. We've discussed some of that already. And the review recognizes this problem and proposes what it calls a new partnership with host states. But we also know that in contemporary conflict environments, political authority is frequently fragmented and contested. the legitimacy of a mission depends on the relationships with a much wider ecosystem of actors. That includes opposition groups, subnational authorities, de facto authorities, civil society, communities, range of other parties to conflict, but critically that conflict-affected population themselves. For these reasons, consent is, as has been mentioned, it's rarely uniform, it's not singular or monolithic, it's distributed, it's conditional and contested. While a government may support a mission, other sections of the population may oppose it. But within one government or host authority, different ministries, different sections of the same government might adopt different positions. So the practical implication of this is pretty important. As I think has been said now a couple of times, we should stop thinking about consent as something a mission either has or doesn't have, that binary. Instead, we need to understand it as something that exists in different forms among different actors at different levels. Importantly, it's dynamic. It changes over time. It's very different at the start of a mission, but also very different at key junctures particularly political moments within a mission life cycle. So this means missions need systematic strategies for maintaining that political and social legitimacy, including community engagement and mechanisms through which conflict affected populations can meaningfully influence priorities and activities. Second key point, we need to balance rights with responsibilities in this relationship or partnership. The review rightly proposes greater host state involvement in the mandating and mandate renewal process in particular. I think that's essential and could go some way to helping to address the perception at least that mandates are designed here in New York and imposed upon or sent to countries without sufficient consultation. But if that brings greater voice and agency to critical partners, then I think that should also come with greater responsibility and accountability. And that's what many of the interviews I did for the study point to. One of the concerns I identify in the paper is that discussions of host state partnership can emphasize what the UN should do differently. without giving equivalent attention to what host governments and other parties to conflict themselves must do to enable mandate implementation. So this is about shifting that relationship from one of a beneficiary and a provider to shifting that balance towards one more of partnership, co-architects of a sustained peace. That means establishing clear reciprocal responsibilities. What will the UN do? What will host states do? What actions are required by other parties? How will we know when these commitments are being met? And so the paper argues for jointly developed benchmarks and monitoring frameworks where these responsibilities are clearly allocated, but also sufficiently adaptable, as Benoit said, to respond, adapt to changing circumstances. So consent without cooperation is insufficient, as we know. Third key point, key finding is that consent needs to be treated as a political process, not a one off event or agreement. So it can't be understood as a condition secured purely at the beginning of a mission, as the USG said, but instead it needs to be understood as an ongoing process of political relationship management. They need to be continuously cultivated monitored and where necessary, adapted and renegotiated throughout a mission. That has implications for missions in the Secretariat and the Council, but also for the wider UN system. So while the Council might benefit from meeting more regularly and engaging with host state, host country interlocutors, more field visits through the working groups and perhaps other mechanisms of the Council, That responsibility should not rest with the council alone. The General Assembly and the Peacebuilding Commission can provide additional spaces for dialogue, particularly when relations with the council become difficult. That is the host of in-country actors, such as missions, resident coordinators and country teams. There should be greater alignment. to use the wider political and development presence to sustain those relationships. So maintaining consent should become a whole of mission responsibility. And last but not least, this manifestation of these three kind of key findings in the idea of the strategic compact or the high level political agreement. That proposal isn't new. It's been doing the rounds for many years, certainly since the Hippo report, but in the paper I argue that there's considerable potential in working through that idea. I think it can potentially clarify reciprocal expectations, as I've mentioned. It can establish what the UN will deliver and what host country authorities need to guarantee, but it can also strengthen that participation and buy-in and ownership from partners. Importantly, it can make that cooperation and progress more transparent, potentially helping to counter even some of the misinformation and unrealistic expectations surrounding missions. The paper, and this is where I'll come to a close, Benoit, perhaps for now, but really tries to highlight and draw out the main, the significant impediments and risks to reaching a meaningful compact style agreement. Questions around who is a good signatory for a compact when political authority is contested, like I started by saying, and it almost always is, who is the right signatory? Second, what happens when governments change? We've seen cases quite recently where, whether it's by the ballot or through unconstitutional means, governments and recognized authorities change. What happens then? Whose compact really is it? How do we include those local communities without arbitrarily privileging some but not others? And how do we prevent a more punitive or conditionality format to this kind of compact without that appearing as paternalistic and problematic and reinforcing some of those power relations? And all of that really points to a big question about, first, how do we stop this just becoming another document that sits on the shelf alongside a mission strategy or a mandate or something which hasn't been as adaptive and responsive. And the last major challenge I think we need to be clear-eyed about is how do we prevent host governments Not all, not all of the time, but when the political conditions dictate, how do we prevent host governments from using this process to acquire an effective veto over the mission's strategic purpose or critical capabilities, kind of the opposite effect to what we're really trying to achieve here. So as I said, the paper makes a series of recommendations on how to kind of harness some of this potential that I see, that I think many people do see. but also how we might be able to overcome some of the challenges, which are very real and very thorny and vexing. And perhaps I can pick up on some of those in the Q&A. Benoit, thanks very much.

Thank you so much, Charlie, and congratulations on a really well-written paper, in my opinion. Let me now bring in our panel into the discussion and beginning with Ambassador Brown. Ambassador, Liberia gives us a particularly useful example, a useful perspective, both as a former host country of UNMIL and now as well as a member of the Security Council. So, according to you, what can Liberia's experience with UNMIL teaches about the role of host countries in establishing and enabling a sustained cooperation with the UN mission and the UN Security Council? And how might these lessons inform a future strategic compact? Over to you, Ambassador.

Thank you. Thank you, Benoit. Excellencies, distinguished colleagues, thanks to the co-hosts Sweden, Denmark, and Pakistan for the invitation to be here and for this program. Well, let me begin with a simple proposition. Consent is not permission. Consent is partnership. In peace operations, we too often treat consent as an administrative transaction. secured at deployment, documented, and stored away. Liberia's experience teaches us otherwise. Consent is not a piece of paper. It is a political relationship, one that must be continuously renewed through trust, credibility, and accountability. Two decades ago, Liberia was at the center of these debates. Our country had been devastated by conflict. Our institutions fractured, and civic trust shattered. Today, Liberia has moved from stabilization under UNMIL to serving, as Benoit just pointed out, as an elected member of the United Nations Security Council. That transformation taught us something fundamental. Institutions can be built from the top down. Legitimacy must be built from the ground up. Political consent enables a mission to enter, but societal consent rooted in communities, women, youth, civil society, and traditional authorities is what enables a mission to deliver its mandate and helps peace endure. Our experience with ECOWAS and ECOMOG also reminds us that International operations are strongest when global mandates reinforce rather than supplant regional solidarity. As we implement the Pact for the Future and consider the future of UN peace operations, Liberia proposes three shifts from consent as permission to consent as shared accountability. First, Commit together. Peace operations should complement status of forces agreements with living political compacts among the UN, the host government, and relevant regional organizations. These should define not only what the mission may do, but whatever partner commits to do, and what happens Importantly, when those commitments are not met. Regular political reviews and dispute resolution mechanisms can address friction before it becomes a crisis of consent. Second, listen together. Accountability must not flow only upward. It must also flow toward the communities whose peace we are there to protect. We should strengthen community perception tracking, civil society monitoring, parliamentary liaison, and meaningful participation by women, youth, and traditional authorities who, together, in truth, are the inheritors of the peace. And therefore, the test should be simple. If people on the ground are losing confidence in a mission, the mission should know before the Security Council does. That is not merely feedback. It is an early warning system for consent itself. Third, transition together. A mission should not begin thinking about transition only when it begins thinking about departure. From day one, mandates should include co-designed transition benchmarks, clarifying what success looks like, who assumes responsibility, and how progress will be measured. Transition is not, as many have allowed themselves to think, an exit strategy. It is a transfer of responsibility from international presence to national ownership. Colleagues, accountability should therefore ask more than did the mission fulfill its mandate. We must also ask, did it maintain the trust necessary to fulfill that mandate? Did national institutions gain the capacity to carry the peace forward? And did communities have a meaningful voice in determining whether we were truly succeeding? These are the measures of whether consent remains alive. Peace operations cannot simply be delivered to a country. nor abruptly handed off when a mission packs its bags. Consent, in truth, opens the door. Trust keeps it open. Accountability makes everyone responsible for what lies beyond the door. That is how we move from peacekeeping that is merely present to peacebuilding that is genuinely owned. I thank you.

Thank you so much, Ambassador. Very pertinent points. So thank you so much for these lessons from Liberia. Let me now turn to Ambassador Mikanagi. Ambassador, when a host state consent becomes contested, How should the UN balance respect for national ownership with the need to preserve a mission's mandate and operational effectiveness? And what lessons does Japan draw from its engagement in peace operations? Over to you, please.

Thank you, Benoit. I'm honored to be part of this panel today. And thank you for this very difficult question. As a non-permanent member of the Security Council from 2023 to 2024, Japan witnessed drawdowns like MINUSMA in Mali in 2023 and MONUSCO in DRC in 2024. It's still going on, but Japan has also been participating in AMIS in South Sudan and witnessing challenges faced by AMIS. I think it includes issue of consent. In the past, Japan has also participated in peacekeeping operations like Cambodia and Timor-Leste, which also faced many challenges. But as far as I understand, the consent was not the main issue there. So what is the difficulty we are facing now? As Secretary General pointed out in his report, He said, "In some cases, there is discrepancy between expectation of host governments and communities and the support that missions can provide, either based on their mandates and available resources or due to operational shortcomings." I understand that the question just asked by Benoit concerns how we address this discrepancy. St. report also answers to this question by proposing compact. Compact on mutual commitment between council, secretariat, and host state or states, affirming host state consent with the mission's strategic purpose, key uniformed capabilities, equipment, and technological enablers that are required for its success. This is a very interesting proposal and which deserves careful consideration. And I have read the background paper and I think this background paper contains many important points which are more or less sound reasonable to me. Based on our experience that Japan served in council from 23 to 24, we are also following council even afterwards. We have observed the situation in Security Council, which I think succinctly summarized in the SCG report as well. So I just read the relevant part. Differences among members of the Security Council on how conflicts should end has made collective multilateral action difficult, precisely when this is needed most. Consequently, member states consensus on when to deploy peace operation what they should do and what constitutes success is increasingly challenging to reach. This is probably a very correct, accurate summarization of the current situation in the Security Council. On the side of the host country, as background paper rightly points out, determining who should participate in the compact or drafting the compact can be very difficult. and to be even more difficult if government changes and new leaders may reverse their predecessor's agreement to compact. So to me, and there are also other issues, but to me, it seems rather unrealistic to imagine that the council, secretary at the host country can agree on detailed compact and maintain it over a very long period of time. From the UN's point of view, there are several principles which cannot be compromised, like impartiality and protection of peacekeepers. From host country's point of view, I think there are also several key issues, like accountability for misconduct by peacekeepers included. Therefore, these fundamental principles I think must be agreed clearly in the compact. But to what extent we should agree in the compact, that is probably a difficult question. I think the agreement on this point, core components should be maintained, but to what extent mandate must be written down. That's the question. And background paper calls it living document. It becomes too detailed. It might become a source of death for the living document. So I think we need to consider longer term and concerning financial limitations, which are reality facing these operations. So it might be prudent to start with some limited mandate and seek adjustment in the future if necessary. So that might be a more realistic way of agreeing in the compact. And we are going to introduce this compact and balance respect to national ownership with the need for preserve need to preserve missions mandate. The compact should retain some flexibility while maintaining the core contents. The council should be allowed to include in its mandate resolutions some additional elements which are consistent with the compact but which are not specifically mentioned in it. Minor adjustment of mandate Consistent with the key points, agreements on compacts should be made without amending the compact itself, but in close communication with the host country. But major adjustment of mandate, which go beyond the compact, should be made through the consultation with the host country. In either case, stronger communication between the Council and the host country is required. Brown mentioned partnership and trust, and we have to nurture this partnership and trust. I think SG report mentions visit to the host country, and I agree that more visits should be made.

From my own experience, members of the Council.

Overwhelmed by the workload of the Council?

There are so many meetings to attend and do not have sufficient.

Time to actually understand the situation on the ground. So I think increased visit should be prioritized in the Council's program of work or POW and it will be good for the nurturing partnership and trust. And in addition, to understand the situation on the ground, it is essential for the UN side to understand the feeling and perception of local population.

Japan has been supporting something called the local perception survey as a part of A4P monitoring. And I think similar survey might be useful for the maintenance of consent.

And adjustment of mandate. Mr. Brown mentioned the early warning system, and I think it is similar to that idea.

We need to have regular monitoring of the people's perception on the ground. Apart from the visit and survey, background paper also mentions peace building commission as a possible venue to.

Provide a forum for sustained dialogue. Japan has been a member of the.

PBC for a long time and increasingly recognizing the convening power of the PBC.

I think Liberia is a very good example which utilized PBC after the peacekeeping operation. So maybe Sierra Leone is another very good example. So we should remember that PBC can play very important role in peace building in post-PKO situations. Sometimes there is an overlap between peacekeeping operations and peacebuilding commissions discussion, but we should, we have appropriate utilized PBC as convening power. Unfortunately, the cooperation between the Security Council and PBC has not always been very smooth, but as council members are so busy dealing with daily urgent issues, some division of labour between the council and PBC should be useful also for the council members, and we should learn lessons from successful past examples. I think I should stop here and look forward to hearing from other speakers. Thank you.

Thank you, Ambassador, and I take it that both the Ambassadors my side, see great value in exploring the possibility of a compact, but that it needs to be a flexible document and, above all, as part of a continuing political process. And I like the way how you underlined as well, it needs to be a societal consent that is really at the core if we want to sustain the impact down the road. So thank you for those observations. Let me now turn to Maya. Maya, we have talked in our preparatory discussions on national ownership, which is central to the success of peace operations. According to you, national ownership, how can we really design a strategic level compact that strengthens a host country ownership while also establishing a clear sense of shared responsibility, including the responsibility of host states to support the mission in delivering on its very mandate. Over to you, please, Maya.

Thank you. Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, first of all, allow me to thank the Challenges Forum and the co-hosts for organizing this event and for having me. Just a quick reflection on the evolution of this discussion of host country consent and national ownership. If we look back at how this discussion has evolved, there is actually quite a clear trajectory. from the Hippo report to the Brahimi report, through other reports and calls for reforms, including the Cairo Roadmap, which was adopted in 2020 as a common African position on the UN peacekeeping reform and beyond the UN peacekeeping as well. And now how the Secretary General's review on the future of all forms of UN peacekeeping operations. The language has evolved, but so has the understanding also of what consent entails. The HIPPO was already very clear that peace operations is not about you incoming and taking over. It is a relationship of complementarity and shared responsibility while respecting the primarily responsibilities of the government. And importantly, HIPPO placed political solutions and national ownership at the center. An international operation can create space, support political processes, protect civilians and strengthen institutions, but it cannot substitute for the political choices and leadership that have to sustain peace over time. Also, the Cairo Roadmap took an important step further, particularly from an African perspective, by putting host country ownership more explicitly at the centre of the political process. The introduction of quadrilateral consultations was significant in this regard at that time. It recognized that the strategic direction of a mission should not simply be determined between the Security Council and the Secretariat, but should also be informed by structured and consistent consultations involving host country, the Security Council, troop and police contributing countries and the secretariat and also alongside relevant regional and sub-regional actors who remain central for regional ownership as well and those consultations were intended to inform among other things the long-term political vision of a mission and the prioritization of its political and operational objectives so what differs now what's the different We can somehow see that the Secretary-General's review takes the discussion one step further in this regard, from ownership and consultation towards reciprocity and towards a more practical, maybe, framework for translating principles that have been articulated for some time into a potentially operational framework. by the proposed strategic compact, it also gives a possible political mechanism for making those responsibilities explicit and for revisiting them in the context of the evolving landscape. To reflect just a few quick points to reflect on the question on how can we design a strategic compact that would strengthen host country ownership and also establish a clearer sense of shared responsibility. One, consent is no longer understood simply as the host state saying yes to the deployment of a mission. It is increasingly understood as an ongoing political relationship involving both consent but also commitment. And this is crucial because peace operation operates in a very changing environment. Political relationships evolve. government changes, national priorities shift, the conflict environment changes, and the mission itself develops throughout. So consent, therefore, cannot realistically be reduced to an agreement at the beginning of a mandate. It must be sustained, adapted throughout the lifetime of the operation. But if national ownership is the premise, and it should be, it must be also matched by national responsibility and leadership. This is where strategic compact can be or serve as an added value by clarifying the responsibilities of the host state, the UN mission, and the Security Council more explicit, while providing a framework for sustaining cooperation as the political circumstances evolve. In this sense, the compact would not treat consent as a one-time authorization for deployment. Rather, it could help translate consent into an ongoing political relationship grounded in shared commitment and responsibilities. The key question here is what does host state need from the UN mission? What does the UN mission need from the host state? And what does each need from the Security Council? And this would make responsibilities more visible on all sides. Host states' responsibilities vary in different contexts. but it includes supporting the implementation of the mandate, engaging constructively in political processes, providing the political and institutional space necessary for the mission to operate, while also cooperating with the mission in delivering agreed strategic objectives. On the other hand, the compact should emphasize mutually rather than conditionality, making clear not only what the host state is expected to contribute, but also what cooperation can help unlock in terms of wider political peace-building, development and financial support. Mission responsibilities, on the other hand, should include respecting national ownership and national sovereignty, being clear about what the mission can and cannot deliver from the outset. The overpromising and the misperception of what missions can deliver or what they are mandated to deliver in the first place can create a gap between what local communities expect the mission to deliver and what the mandate actually allows it to do, which can create discontent that can be further later amplified by misinformation or mobilization of this aspect and we've seen it in multiple uh um context the mission should also uh work on forging Regional partnership and and strengthen and African context, for example, the UN-AU partnership, given their familiarity and proximity with the context and drawing on examples where the African Union has supported the deployment of UN missions. The mission should also ensure that its support is well aligned with national priorities and with local needs that are reflecting the realities on the ground and provide realistic advice about what is achievable. The Security Council, on the other hand, should bear the responsibility in providing sustained political backing, maintaining coherence around the mission's strategic objective, ensuring that the mandates are realistic, and matching mandates with the appropriate resources allocated and capabilities and political support. The important principle is Shared responsibility does not mean that everyone has the same responsibility, but rather it means that everyone knows everyone's responsibility and it's very visible and clear about it. One other aspect is Important is to make the compact a living political instrument. The compact should not be overly prescriptive or become a checklist of conditions. It should establish a limited number of strategic commitments and provide for regular reviews. These reviews should not simply ask, has the host state complied? But rather, it should ask, what has changed? Where are the points of friction? Where are the assumptions underpinning the mandate still valid? What does each actor need to do differently? And what additional political engagement is required? Another point is that there needs to be a broader concept of ownership and ensuring an inclusive ownership, societal, as Ambassador mentioned, the societal ownership is what ensures the legitimacy of the consent in the first place, including the consent of local authorities, local communities, women organizations, youth, traditional and community leaders who remain at the forefront of crises on the ground. Last but not least is that the compact has to be used in a way to make expectation management. It should not be something the UN does to the host state and to the population. Instead, The mission should be transparent about its limitation and what it can realistically deliver. The host state should, on the other hand, be transparent about the cooperation and accessibility it is prepared to provide, while the Security Council should be transparent about the political objective it is expected the mission to pursue and support in that regard. Finally, the strategic compact should therefore not be seen as a new contract between the mission and the host state, or a compliance mechanism, or a substitute for political engagement. Its value would very much be putting existing political understanding into clearer terms. So the question should therefore move beyond simply asking, does the host state consent to the mission? and towards asking what are all stakeholders prepared to do to create the sustained condition in which this mandate can succeed. Thank you. I stop here.

Thank you so much, Maya, for a very well-structured and clear presentation. Let me now turn to the last speaker, Fatima Maiga. Fatima, you traveled all the way from Bamako, Mali. And we know that you have worked for a very long time with youth and women groups in Mali. And you have witnessed firsthand the withdrawal of the mission in Mali. So we wanted to hear from you your insights on that withdrawal process, but also if you could reflect perhaps on how a possible compact could help or could have helped build a broader ownership and cooperation beyond the central state, beyond the central government. So over to you, please.

I hope I'm being heard. I can't refrain from thinking that I'm a little bit of an elephant or a hippopotamus in the room coming from Mali. which, as you know, was in three years ago seen as the graveyard of peacekeeping operations. So my being here is very symbolic. It's a testimony that we do believe in the role of the UN in peacekeeping and also of this specific instrument. That being said, Consent, I'm asked to talk about consent. When I was working as chief of staff in the Ministry of Reconciliation 13 years ago, that was before we signed the RGP's agreement, we used to joke that, in fact, we do not consent, and the host country does not consent. The 15 members of the Security Council consent to the mandate and we accept the user agreement. That was kind of the way we saw it. In the case of Mali, it's even more true in the sense that it's not, it doesn't come often in the narrative, but as AFISMA, the MISMA was actually the mission that corresponded, I would say, that reflected the priorities of the government in 2013 and also of the civil society. If you look at the difference between the AFISMA and the MINUSMA, it's quite striking that number one thing that was explicitly banned was counter-terrorism. And counter-terrorism Well, if I translate it in the aspirations of the people in Mali, Malians wanted a very combative offensive mission in 2013 because the issue at stake was to fight terrorist group arms, mostly that. We wanted to recapture lost territories. We wanted to make sure that the unity of Mali would be also preserved. So MISMA, when you look at its mandate, corresponded definitely to the aspirations. So the key pro quo might have started from that. This is why there's a saying in my country. They say,, meaning, "Don't blame your don't for all. when you fell, or the truth, the speaking in French, but on the stumbling, the stumbling point. So I think there was a fault line from the beginning in the minds, in the public opinion on why we went from MISMA, an African-led mission that corresponded to our deep aspirations towards the MINUSMA. And in a very accidental manner, when I was chief of staff at that Ministry of Reconciliation, I think I started seeing how this fault line started to spread with a basic misalignment of what was expected, the famous results, the famous impact that Malians were mostly looking at. We came here in December 2013, and I think this is when the erosion of consent started. to ask not the withdrawal of the MINUSMA, but more of the MINUSMA. The government of Mali, backed by the civil society, came to talk to Mr. Ban Ki-moon at that time to ask for a more operational, a more efficient, and a more functional, but more functional vis-a-vis the aspirations, meaning more protection of civilians, including against violence perpetrated sexual violence against women, more combative strategy against terrorist groups. So when you look at what happened over the past 15 years until the MINUSMA left, to some extent we ask ourselves how it managed to hold that long with such a key protocol. The second thing that really bothered the public opinion and also the government was the lack of exit strategy. Ambassador Brown called it the transition. Every year the mandate was looked as an opportunity actually to see how that transition will start. It took 13 years, but I can tell you that in the government in the General Assembly, the Parliament, it was a very recurrent request by the stakeholders, by the Malian stakeholders, to have a clear exit strategy, especially as the MINUSMA was seen as struggling in terms of anti-terrorism and especially as the threat, the terrorist threat started to go down from the northern region where it was confined to almost every region of Mali. I don't mean to be very critical, but I'm trying to share the gap between the expectations, the deep aspirations, and how the two basically evolved side by side. There were two processes, two agendas. I know the review talks at length about inclusivity, but how do you do that? How do you really beyond the principle? I don't mean to be corporatist, but as women, women's group know a little bit how to get to consent, how to get inclusion, because we are fighting certain battles that require consensus, that require consent. So to some extent, we've come to a definition of what consent means that could have been very useful. We don't try to get to yes. What we do, we try to silence the opposition. We silence the no's. This is what we do when we do reforms, for example, as we've done with the quota law that I worked on. So that requires a deep understanding of the political landscape, a deep understanding of where the opposition is formed and what type of position of opposition can actually detract a mission like the MINUSMA. And working with women, I believe, is extremely key to understanding how to actually broaden how to get the infusion of reality, the reality checks that might be needed to actually maintain contact with the ground and with the evolution of aspirations. I would also say that it was very important to pay attention to opinion makers. 13 years ago, we didn't have social media. We also didn't have a generation of Malians, you know, 70% of our population is age less than 30, meaning that today, if you're 20 years old Malian, you have not known what peace really means. So for, and we've done some research to see that The neutrality that is conveyed by peacekeeping, for example, doesn't speak to them. They say there's no peace to maintain. They're more into things that they can put their fingers on. They live their lives as young people able to manage insecurity, but still yearning for a future. So If you were to come with a compact based on the experience of people like us, we might be sounding a little bit misaligned by their aspirations. When the attacks on the 25th of April happened in Mali, the thing that was the most striking is how the young people took up the social media, TikTok, for example, and called upon some of the leaders of the JNIM and actually started this direct discussion with them, found out where they came from, spoke to them, and managed to tell us who they were. Some of them had mental problems, for example. This is how, through those young people, we found out that the key to maybe resolving some of the issues were not only direct mediations, but looking at things that we almost never looked at, mental health, addressing some root causes, why are young people just taking up arms? Many of them are doing it for financial reasons. And poverty, the fight against poverty is no longer really much in the agenda in this country for so many reasons. So the compact might mean to adopt a very different way of dialoguing, of choosing who matters, who should be setting the agenda. So this generation can set the agenda and they are actually showing the way. My last point, maybe delving again about the different type of actors. 13 years ago, the central state was in bilateral discussion with the powers to be. Now we have such a range of influencers. We have in my country, Ukraine, Russia, Turkey, of course, China, the UAE, many of whom are not behind the scene, obviously, many of whom are influencing consent, we know. And that has nothing to do, I would say, with the host country as it's sometimes portrayed. What I would like to say, and this is for the next generation of peacekeeping operations, consent has to be defined in a more candid, more realistic, more geopolitical way. because the people in the countries are not, comment dirais-je en francais, beyond all the conspirationalist theories. They do not believe that, let me try to frame it in a political manner. They believe in the diversification of responses, they believe not so much in partnership, but believe, again, in diversification and leadership. They feel that the leadership must come from the country, must come from the region, must come from certain blocs like the IES, and the multilateral institutions as we were used to, like the UN or certain countries, will then come as secondary. So there's an entire way of conceiving of the future of peace in a way that is called sovereign by some people, but that is deeply embedded in the aspirations of this new generation that calls that sees this as a way to own the future, to be able to be at the lead of this future, including in deciding what type of peace they want. I don't know if I have sent you the message in a diplomatic manner, but it seems to me that the compact needs to pay attention very much to this localization that we call in the development sector, but it's making central aspirations, extremely new but powerful changemakers, influencers, and it's happening at the local level and not exactly at the regional or international level. So that's a shift that must be understood for the next generation. Merci beaucoup.

Thank you very much, Fatima, for those points. I really like the way you opened the discussion and bring in the dimension of local dialogue and the need to really find ways to amend the way we think of a compact and really make sure that we can include a much wider perspective. And I think that talks to the point that you made as well, Ambassador, about local perceptions, and even Ambassador Brown from Liberia. So thank you so much for bringing in the Mali perspective there. We have about 10 minutes time, so I want to start talking about perhaps turning some of these reflections and good ideas into action, right? We are here as well to turn the review recommendations into action. So, Charlie, let me get back to you and perhaps ask you from a very practical perspective, if we were indeed to develop a strategic compact, what would, according to you, make it work and what would be the risks? Over to you.

Thanks, Benoit. We don't have long enough for me to go through everything in the paper, but that's there for you if you're interested. I guess maybe there's three key things I could focus on. I think I highlighted some of the risks before, and so it's more about how do you overcome those risks. And I think the first one is this idea of making it a process rather than a product. It's been said many times. But it's really then about how you get away from the product, this paper on the shelf problem. And I think that is about being creative and finding different formats and forums to have this iterative political dialogue that's, number one, structured, so it's transparent and it's regularised, it breaks out of this kind of annual mandate renewal orthodoxy.

But then, number two.

My second point, that piece about inclusivity that Fatima has made the point so clearly, but how do you do that in practice? Like you said, how do you get away from the principle? And I think it's using this more regularized dialogue in a more expanded way. So that is not going to be these chambers because they're not big enough to bring all the stakeholders together. And it is, of course, politically fraught to expand that pool. But I think we need to be serious about bringing those voices in and enabling, creating the platforms for it. Maybe just because of time, let me just say one more thing, and it's slightly different to that. It's about what else you can put in the, I think, Maya and others have been very articulate about what needs to be in a compact. the different stakeholders side, but I think there's something to think through and talk through about how we incentivize this. So how you include and incorporate the carrots rather than the sticks, right? This conditionality or the punitive approaches, we know that's not likely to work at this strategic level. So the emphasis has to be on incentives, I think, and mutuality. It's the shared commitments idea. And I think one line of inquiry there, let's put it this way, and this speaks to the, including the PBC, but also the IFIs, the multilateral banks, like where does the kind of dividends of staying inside this compact, where do they appear? Because I think this is often less well understood. I think I say it in the paper that the dividends, the benefits that can flow from this partnership are often less clear or less understood. And I think making that more clear, so bringing in the peacebuilding development partners more explicitly is one way you can embed the dividends, the incentives, but also in doing so, you raise the political costs to all of the partners, the signatories of reneging. And I think that's something that could actually move us, move the needle on this difficult thing about what you do when it doesn't work, when the politics don't line up, when it really matters about this stuff, because that's not easy. There are no simple solutions. So I think being quite explicit about how you how you embed those incentives is probably an important aspect. I should just say maybe because this is my last chance to say anything, I think there's two important caveats that we haven't addressed that I'll just say very quickly. I think compacts can't simply be understood as this more coherent development framework. Peace operations by their nature have a distinct set of responsibilities. When you're monitoring human rights violations and you're protecting civilians irrespective of the source, then you're not just a development partner and you're not just a service provider. And the agreement that sits across that needs to reflect that, I think. So we need to be clear-eyed about that. That makes it more difficult, not more easy, by the way. And then second and last, and then I'll stop, Benoit. I think However much merit utility there is in compacts, I think we need to also hold the space, and this was alluded to earlier, that they won't always be possible or right, and therefore. they shouldn't become a kind of sine qua non or a non-negotiable prerequisite for a mission, a new mission to be deployed. We need to allow the flexibility for peacekeeping and peace operations more broadly to respond to need when there's something they can do to protect civilians, they can do something to de-escalate conflict, then we shouldn't have this compact as something that holds that back. So I just wanted to put that out there as well. Thanks, Benoit.

Thank you very much, Charlie. I would now like to turn to Jimmy, Shewile. Your ambassador had to unfortunately leave to a Security Council meeting, but I thought the Liberia experiences were very pertinent. So I was wondering if you could also share your insights on what would it entail to have, from a practical perspective, a functioning compact. Over to you, please.

Thank you, Benoit. Sitting in the seat of Ambassador Brown is not an easy thing. I think he has done the easier task, but now I will try to answer the questions. Well, I think he has, in my view, provided substantive information around what this topic entails, especially from a Liberian perspective. But I would like to add something which I think is also which borders on accountability. And in the context of Liberia, it has been so important that at some point in time, gain the attention of all policy makers. And I must acknowledge that the Food Benevolent Academy was very helpful in financing the project that looks into accountability, relevant to the very discussion we're having. And before I give you one practical example, I'd like to highlight just a basic excerpt from the study. Within the context of Liberia, security sector and the justice system reform It highlighted that accountability is not a single mechanism, but a whole web of interconnected relationship involving individuals, social, horizontal, and vertical processes. The point is, in our system, hierarchical structure is often respected, and sometimes those who are even the recipient of policy are not consulted. So the study went further to say vertical accountability based on hierarchical structure and authority commands structure remains dominant. While horizontal oversight institution and social accountability mechanism often remain comparatively weak. Coming back to see how such a compact can address some of the the drawback in our society, even though Liberia is always seen as a success story, the lack of inclusivity, as some of the panelists have said, especially for young people who constitute a majority percentage of our population, that in itself poses risk. And There's also a duality within our judiciary system, both customary practices and statutory practices. In often cases, the statutory practices seems to not want to respect the existing and the functionality of the customary practices. And that again poses another risk. So when you have a compact that is only been negotiated, with government authority and not the local community. You are clearly setting it up as business as usual. So I would say, and in terms of practical example, I've benefited from the intervention of extended groups, for instance, the peacebuilding funding. When the war finished in 2003, the first intervention was when the peacebuilding fund, and we were asked to go to a region to work. Then I was the head of Interpeace Liberia. This region was perceived as the most dangerous region in the country. And because Interpeace claimed to have the solution to some of these dialogue, community dialogue, we were recruited. And as the head of that intervention, it was very difficult to even recruit people who wanted to go to those regions that were then perceived like that. But we have to get away from the usual process of recruiting, which is common in most of our African state, who knows you? rather than bringing people who represent or who are affected by the crisis. So I use the other approach, and I'm always like to acknowledge and being thankful to who is today the president of Guatemala, Bernardo Aruario, who were then my supervisor. So we use a different approach that allows us to listen, sit with, and dialogue with those who are concerned. Another thing we've done in the past was to bring those who would otherwise not be considered as business as usual, for instance, the young people, people with disability, and the old people and women to the dialogue table. So the introduction of these people who were not considered to be the usual stakeholders have helped us to bring the changes. that led to peace being built in the communities that you can hear about, like Nima County, those very polarized community. If we have gone the usual way, dealing with only stakeholders or those who consider to be the spokespeople for those community, we would not have made such a success that we've made. So one point I'd like to emphasize in terms of how such a compact will happen is to be inclusive, is to get away from business as usual, to make the joining more inclusive, meaning even those who've been excluded. We do know that exclusion can be self-imposed. Some people feel that because of their own ethnicity, they are not being accepted, but sometimes it's not because of ethnicity. Sometimes it's just a basic orientation that you have in the community. But change the approach. It can't be business as usual, especially in the post-conflict setting where everything has been. the straw where people went against one another. So there's no time and a compact should say these are the legitimate stakeholders. We want to deal with them at the expense of those who are perhaps far away from the capital. Those practical approaches we use help us today to have what we have today. It was the intervention of us in Nima that qualified Liberia for more peacebuilding form because An evaluation by the New York University showed the intervention was successful. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Jimmy, for those reflections. I'm afraid that we are running out of time. So thank you for emphasizing the point that was made by a number of speakers about inclusivity. I would like to thank all of the speakers for this very rich round of interventions. Thank you so much from the bottom of my heart. We will now take a short leg stretcher and reconvene at 16:45 for our final session, where we will look ahead at the future of peace operations and the new UN leadership. Just one word before you stand up. If you are curious about the postcards that you should have in front of you, we have about 100 postcards that are addressed to the next Secretary-General from the future. And there's a prompt on the postcard as well. So If you like, no obligations here, if you like, please respond to the prompt and post them in the boxes at the back of this room. You can do it anonymously or you can sign with your name. We will compile them and exhibit them. And who knows, maybe you may get a reply from the next Secretary General. So thank you for that. See you soon.

I hope everyone were able to stretch their legs in an appropriate manner, I was about to say, I also said that, but that you're feeling refreshed and ready for the concluding session of this annual forum. The headline for this session is Looking Ahead, a vision on peace operations for the next Secretary General. And we have many speakers have during the forum come back to this critical point in time when we gather and the timeliness of this of this forum with the with the overview just published and with the process of getting together, electing a new Secretary General. And here we are gathering practitioners, policymakers, researchers to convene and discuss and advance the conversation on peace operations and multilateral peace operations for the future. I want to say we are also very honored to have Madam Rebecca Grinspan with us in the hall. We sent out an invitation to all candidates for the position of Secretary General of the UN. And we're very happy, Rebecca, that you were able to attend and be with us. But for everyone's, for the protocol, we have invited all of the running candidates. And I will invite Rebecca in the end to also reflect on what she has heard during this session. So you're most welcome to the Challenges Forum. I want to briefly introduce the panelists that I have with me. It's a very distinguished panel. I'm very honored to be moderating this discussion between them. On my right is Gregor Kessler, permanent representative of Austria to the United Nations. We, of course, acknowledge Austria's commitment to multilateralism and also to the UN peace and security pillar. So we're very happy to have you here. On my left is Ramazan Erdag, who is chairman of the Center for Strategic Research in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Turkey. And we all know Turkey playing a very important role in many complex security settings and challenges around the world. And Ramazan's commitment to be part of the conversation with us today is also something we acknowledge. I have Jean-Marie Gouenou, who doesn't need an introduction in this forum. He is currently director of the Kent Global Leadership Program in Conflict Resolution at Harvard, at Columbia, sorry. And he's also the patron of the Challenges Forum. And Jean-Marie, also your personal commitment, you're keeping to contribute to this conversation on on peace operations. I salute that and I'm very happy that you're here with us in this panel. And then on my right, Aditi Gurur, campaign coordinator, One for 8 Billion. We acknowledge your work in opening up what seems to be quite closed, making sense in what is very difficult to understand hearing transparency in this election process of an USG and what we can expect from that. So thank you very much for being with us and look forward also to hear your perspective on this conversation. So the discussions throughout today, you've all heard, have highlighted the challenges that peace operations face. including the shrinking financial resources, increasingly complex conflict environments, the contested host country consent, and so on and so forth. The review that we've discussed provides a basis for rethinking peace operations. and while the transition to a new SG creates an opportunity to consider what direction the United Nations approach to peace and security could and should take the coming years. So this is the frame which we are operating and having this conversation. Now, I want to have a forward-looking conversation, right? So I invite speakers now to look beyond the current challenges and consider what they would like to see changed in the role and the use of peace operations by the end of the next Secretary General's term. So let's look ahead. And we invited everyone before the break to write postcards to the new SG to read in the end of the next term. So I just put my hand down in this post, in this mailbox before taking the stage. And I'm just going to read one of these postcards out loud. So we're now five, six years ahead, right? So, "Dear Secretary-General, it's the end of your tenure. You dared to go out there and make peace. You've used the UN's tools flexibly, and you adapted them when needed. Thank you for your courage and proactive leadership. You did it. Now that's one postcard to get. So expectations are high and we will now try to gather our perspectives on what can we do to set the scene, create the conditions for the SGE to succeed with this. So I encourage you to think beyond just some incremental adaptation. Let's explore where the real opportunities are for genuine change and innovation. And I also reiterate what has been said throughout the forum. We're not here for one single vision or one model that should work for the future, but more to explore the different choices, the possibilities, the different avenues that we could take to shape the priorities for the next SG. Okay. I start with you, Aditi. Is that fine? Yeah. I mean, if you, with all your experience, what should be the strategic priorities for an incoming SG to build the momentum needed for more effective UN peace operations or more of an effective, maybe peace and security pillar of the UN? And maybe what would you think would be sort of, what can we expect from you know, it's very often very popular to talk about the first 100 days. So I thought, let's talk about the first 100 days. What can we expect from the first 100 days?

Well, thank you so much, Per, for the invitation. Thank you very much to the governments of Denmark, Sweden, and Pakistan for convening this. It's such an exciting time to be talking about peace operations on the eve of a new SG and all of the changes that that will bring. At least I hope we're on the eve of a new SG. The Security Council seems very intent on keeping us all on our toes about that. But You know, just to quickly reiterate what Per said, I am with the One for 8 Billion campaign. For those of you who don't know us very well, we are a global advocacy movement of more than 200 NGOs from around the world working together to push for a more open and inclusive process for selecting the next SG. And in my work with the One for 8 Billion campaign, I've, of course, been following the SG selection process very closely. And I'm sorry to say that peace operations have not featured very prominently in the selection process so far. I think that's a reflection of where peace operations are at this moment. There haven't been a lot of member state questions focused on this issue. That's now, that's the situation now, but a new day is coming and SG will soon take office and it will be a blank slate. So what do I hope for from the next SG in their first 100 days on peace operations? I'll say what I don't hope for. I hope we won't see another peace operations review. I think we've had enough reviews. I'm sure there will be many competing reform priorities, and peace operations will be part of the mix, of course. But We have a lot of great ideas to work from. And what I most hope for from the next SG on peace operations could be summarized as enthusiasm. I hope that the next SG will be a cheerleader for peace operations. There's a lot that the next leader of the UN will be unable to do on their own. They'll need member state cooperation on everything from budgets to mandates, of course. But what the next SG can do on their own is make peace operations politically relevant. They can do that entirely of their own steam. And so I can offer a couple of ideas for the next SG to consider for how to express that enthusiasm. But bearing in mind, I mean, there are printers all over New York running out of ink with all of the advice that people are printing for the next SG's consideration. So I'll share for what it's worth. My first idea is... is to do with immediate peace and security priorities. And Ms. Greenspan, I'm sure, has been approached by many people with ideas about, traditionally, SGs take on one or two crises as their immediate priorities that they're going to devote their personal attention to in their initial stage of their leadership. And there's lots of ideas about what that crisis could be for the next SG. I'm sure all of you were hearing lots of hallway chatter during high level week. Sudan has come up a lot. But even some unexpected crises that I've heard discussed that there's potential, for example, for the next SG to make some progress on the Ukraine crisis or kind of lesser discussed options. So whatever crisis it is they choose, I hope that the next SG will direct the secretariat to produce some options for what a UN peace operation could look like in that crisis, in responding to that crisis. And when I say produce some options, I'm not talking about the traditional, well, here's one option that's obviously too small, and here's another option that's clearly unworkably large, and then here's the third option that's clearly the only realistic one, right? I'm not talking about that. What I'm talking about is different types of missions that could respond to different theories of change of how the UN could play some part in the international response to that crisis. So taking the Sudan example, what could a UN mission look like in Sudan that is focused on protecting humanitarian corridors? What could a mission look like in Sudan that's focused on changing the battlefield calculus for the parties to the conflict to incentivize them to come to the negotiating table? What could a mission look like in Sudan that's focused on ceasefire monitoring? Or what about a mission that looks a little bit like the UNAMIN model that's focused on protection of civilians? I hope that the next SG will task the secretariat to come up with some interesting, innovative options. You have a brilliant team at your disposal to produce those ideas. And keep them in the mix. You may find that none of those missions are exactly the right response for the UN to that crisis, but talk about them. talk with member states about them and get their reactions to what a UN peace operation could look like in that crisis that you're going to prioritize. I think that goes a long way toward reviving peace operations. And, you know, you can certainly bring in some of the lessons from the recent review of operations. There's a lot of good ideas in there about sort of enabling the secretary to proactively produce analysis. I think that's a great sort of recommendation that you can apply across many situations, not just in that immediate crisis priority that you choose. But that would be one starting point. And if the next SG were to do that in their first 100 days, I think already that would be music to my ears. One more idea that I'll throw into the mix is perhaps to visit different mission settings with a view toward resetting consent. We've just had a really great discussion on consent in the last panel. If the next SG, you know, saw fit to visit some missions and convene some dialogues with the main stakeholders to the crises where political processes seem stuck, to talk through with the parties to the conflict, with the mission leadership, what the mission's role should be. Is the political process-- are the parties committed to the political process? Is there a different political process that needs to be considered? coming there and talking about consent, talking about the party's commitment to the political process. Again, I think, you know, the next SG will have a lot of cache, a lot of eyes on them in that initial period, in that first 100 days. And visiting those missions and convening those discussions could really make a big difference in moving the political process forward and enabling those peace operations in those settings to really make some advances. So, and you could even think about combining those with a council visit to those countries. Right. So I'm I won't I won't throw in. I feel like there's so much so many possible ways that the next SG could signal their enthusiasm. But I'll leave it there and just say that I hope that the next SG will be a cheerleader for peace operations.

Thank you so much. Yes. So so an engaged cheerleader. But I also hear you say we need pragmatic options to facilitate the discussion among member states and in the council of what we actually want the UN to do and what role we want the UN to play. And that discussion can be facilitated by putting different options on the table. And you're coming back also, Aditi, to what was discussed earlier today, that presence matter, to be visible and to be engaged in that way. So thank you very much for putting all of that on the floor for this discussion. Gregor, I want to turn to you. The world is increasingly capable of fighting wars, but we are struggling to maintain the political and institutional capacity to prevent and resolve them. Now, the challenge is, of course, not just to contain violence, but to rebuild the conditions for peace. And we, you know, we are in this, in this exact time now, we have a lot of hope and we put a lot of expectations on a new SG to solve this for us, but She will not work in a vacuum, right? The UN is foremost member states. So in your perspective, how can member states use this moment of transition to build the political convergence or create the conditions for an incoming Secretary General to do her part in turning the tide? Thank you.

Let me start with I think those should be kept, because it's already an achievement before you even start it. Now, Austria, as a long-standing troop-contributing country, of course, has a particularly keen interest in seeing new options out there. Together with Denmark, we pushed for this integrated mission planning. But let me be less technical first. Leadership. And we've had a great discussion actually about leadership for the UN in Arpach this summer with many stakeholders, including with Rebecca. We tend very easily to put the whole burden of that leadership only to the new Secretary General or to the current Secretary General for that matter. And I believe it's very strongly a shared responsibility. So we member states need to actually address what we need to do in order to empower the SG. And at the same time, of course, we need an SG that is responsive to the needs. And that I would tie that very much to what you said. It's this idea of actually giving options, not waiting till you're tasked by the P5 or the Security Council, but actually planning ahead. So we discussed a lot in the hearings, we discussed a lot about monitoring, you know, preparing, mediating, early warning systems. If we look at South Sudan at the moment, we all know something is coming. We all know we have a mission there. I don't want to go into the details now, but where is the next step? So what is it actually that we do as member states, together with the Secretary, to prepare for the next possible escalation or prevent it? if possible. So I think this aspect is extremely important. And that already leads to my second point, and that is we are in a new reality, one of which is new technologies. I'm sure you've discussed this today. Drones and other high-tech weaponry are now an incredible challenge for peacekeeping operations. and they can't keep up with that. So we need to empower those missions to not only deal with those challenges, but also to use those challenges. We had a very good discussion recently with a new Colombian PR who then said, okay, we can, you know, some of the monitoring jobs that have been done by boots on the ground can now be done by drones. So there are both ways of looking at that. So let's say equipping, absorbing the technology challenge into the new mission planning. Second point I would make is on we need to be, we are in different geopolitical situation, especially with this US administration, but much more beyond that. So we need to be open for creative and new solutions. There are some two very interesting processes going on, one with Haiti, one with Gaza, we all know that. The question is, how do we tie that to the Security Council and the responsibility of all of us, but especially Council members? So we need to look into the setup of those new options we have, but maybe in a more advanced sense. So maybe it ties quite well to what you said, but thinking ahead of saying, let's not say, no, this hasn't been done before. We need to be able to embrace new challenges in a time where there is less money and where it will be harder to build consent around actually going into a setting. And then last point is mission adaptability. Again, it ties to what I said before. So when we give mandates or when we renew mandates, it would be extremely important. And again, that's something a secretariat with the right leadership can help us do, to have mission adaptability built in so that we have, yes, we have a focused mandate that supports a political process, but we also have mission adaptability. So when it's evolving and that goes into a host country consent issue, It goes into technological challenges, goes into external actors, that these missions have the ability to adapt and that we don't start adapting only once we're there and we see problems, but that this is being already built in a certain way in the foundational mandate, if you will. So, thank you.

Thank you so much. And so you're speaking about the leadership of the member states, equipping missions for the conflict dynamic of today, of tomorrow, new technologies, being adaptive, using mandates in an adaptive way. Are members of the Council ready to collectively take that leadership, do you think?

I'll tell you in a year.

All right, let's come back to that discussion in a year then. Thank you so much for that. So I turn to Ramzan, to you now. Obviously, the conflict dynamics around the world are changing, and they're changing quite rapidly. We see overlapping conflict settings. And there are, of course, many actors with a lot of interest in getting involved in these conflicts around the world. At the same time, as we are searching for a role for the United Nations to play in these conflicts, not only to be an organization that handles the consequences of conflicts and crisis, but to be an organization that prevents and ends conflict and crisis. And we're talking again now about the space that we want to give a new Secretary General to act on this, to lead on that. But I also want to turn to you as, from your perspective, what is needed among member states to create such a space for a new SG?

Thank you, Per. First of all, I would like to thank Sweden, Denmark and Pakistan's representatives for hosting us and Challenges Forum. for inviting me to this forum. As you all know well, today the world is going through a period characterized by increased uncertainties and unpredictability, as well as crises and conflicts threatening peace and stability. We are witnessing accelerated rivalries among various powers. While existing balances of power are in flux and regional dynamics are shifting, the international setting is shaped by the erosion of multilateralism and universal norms. The conflict landscape has also changed profoundly. Conflicts today are increasingly fragmented, more complex, and often shaped by regional and international dynamics. This changing landscape requires us to rethink the tools we have traditionally relied on to maintain international peace and security. In this context, however, the UN Charter provides a comprehensive framework for the peaceful settlement of disputes. Chapter VI reminds us that negotiation, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement, and the good offices of the Secretary-General are not secondary options. They are the primary tools for maintaining international peace and security. The UN also has demonstrated through its peacekeeping operations its crucial role in maintaining peace, protecting civilians, and supporting political processes. Indeed, peacekeeping remains an important expression of the international community's commitment to sustaining peace. But the role of UN peace operations cannot be understood solely in terms of sustaining peace after conflict has erupted. Their broader contribution lies in creating the political and security conditions in which dialogue, reconciliation and negotiated solutions can take root. As highlighted in the Secretary-General's recent report, peace operations need to be urgently adapted to evolving conflict dynamics and become more flexible, context-specific and politically responsible. By maintaining ceasefires, creating space for political dialogue, monitoring emerging tensions and deterring renewed violence, peacekeeping operations can contribute not only to sustaining peace, but also to preventing further escalation. The challenge before us is, therefore, not the absence of institutional tools, but ensuring that they are used early, consistently and in good faith. And the answer does not lie in asking the UN to do everything itself. Rather, it lies in the strengthening of broader mediation ecosystem in which different actors bring their distinct advantages to a common effort. We are witnessing how wars lead to humanitarian tragedy and how have negative impacts on the global economy as well as on trade, energy, and food security. Developments in the Middle East, for instance, directly affect the entire world in all terms. All countries have been feeling the impact of war to varying degrees. If any problem or issue remains unresolved or leads to a new war or crisis, it could create serious challenges for everyone, such as disruption to vital energy and trade flows, rupture of supply chains, irregular migration, and the emergence of a security vacuum within a region or beyond. Thus, it should be kept in mind that solution of global challenge depends on a collective efforts forged by cooperation and effective multilateralism. In this way, UN peacekeeping operations represent one of the most visible and effective manifestations of multilateralism. For more than 75 years, UN peacekeeping operations have played a vital role in fostering stability, supporting peace arrangements, and protecting civilians, often in complex and dangerous circumstances around the world. For its part, Turkey has broadly contributed to these efforts by deploying personnel to several missions, both in our region and across the globe. Currently, we have police officers and military experts deployed in five different UN peacekeeping missions. We follow closely the ongoing contingency planning to optimize resources and personnel. We underline the importance of maintaining close coordination with contributing countries in these processes. Peace operations should adapt to an evolving global landscape. They should be They should be provided with the necessary financial and operational support. In this regard, we take note of the UN Secretary General's report. We are carefully considering its findings and recommendations to better prepare the UN peace operations to changing contemporary situations. Due to the paralyze of global government's mechanism, however, the international system is faced with a protracted crisis of legitimacy. In this context, reforming the international system is no longer a matter of political preference, but an urgent necessity. Turkey, while supporting ongoing efforts to make the UN more effective and fit to face current complex challenges, attaches importance to the UN Security Council reform in order to make it more transparent, effective, inclusive, and representative. In an environment of global uncertainty, Turkish diplomacy seeks to mitigate risk and maximize opportunities by acting as a source of stability in its region through effective crisis management. Turkish foreign policy aims to protect Turkey's interest in this volatile regional and global environment, while also shaping conditions for the sustainable peace and development in our neighborhood and beyond. In this regard, Turkey benefits from its deep-rooted tradition of diplomacy and the strength from several factors, including its geographical position, rich historical experience, robust institutions, strong human resources, and dynamic economy. Our foreign policy toolbox include establishing multilateral mechanism, creating a positive agenda with our counterparts, making use of a mediation, facilitation, building strategic partnerships, and taking proactive diplomatic steps in times of crisis. Hence, peaceful resolution of regional conflicts constitutes a top priority for Turkish foreign policy. Turkey has been closely monitoring the conflicts unfolding in its neighborhood and guided by a proactive approach and a vision of regional ownership has been pursuing intensive diplomatic efforts to prevent spread of conflicts and create a common ground for dialogue between parties. Within this understanding, Turkey will continue to act committed, forging a zone of security and stability in its region and beyond. Turkey will continue to make concrete contributions to UN peacekeeping operations throughout the new Secretary-General's term and will spare no effort to support the establishment of lasting peace and security. Turkey pursues a proactive diplomacy in order to eliminate threats and challenges to regional and global peace, stability, and prosperity. These values underpin our vision for a more just, peaceful, and inclusive international order. We must not forget that preventing conflict and establishing lasting peace and security is not merely a global imperative; it is a shared responsibility of the international community. Regardless of the challenges we have faced today, are facing or will be facing in the near future, we must be reminded the demonstrated capacity of peace operations to evolve. In this vein, as I have said before, the challenge before us is not the absence of institutional tools, but ensuring that they are used early, consistently, and in good faith. For if you allow me, I just want to declare my wordings in the card, however I put in the inbox. I just want to say to the next Secretary-General that keeping the peace is as valuable and important as making the peace. Thank you very much.

Thank you so much, Ramazan. And bringing the so important notion of that we need active and engaged member states that act not undermining multilateralism, but strengthening the multilateral approach, creating those political security conditions needed for sustainable solutions to take root, as you say. Thank you for bringing also to the attention that there is the broader ecosystem of actors, which I think speaks also the idea of more networked peace operations that is also part of the review. So thank you for that. Now, Jean-Marie, it's my honor to turn to you with all your experience in this field that you've so generously shared with the Challenges Forum throughout the years. How also acknowledging that peace operations is one tool in the new Secretary-General's toolbox to prevent and resolve conflict. But how can peace operations be positioned in this toolbox as part of the stronger UN effort? And what type of leadership will be needed from the Secretary-General and from the Security Council to make that possible?

Thank you. Well, thank you. It's an honor and a pleasure to speak in that forum, and I want to thank Denmark, Sweden, Pakistan for convening that meeting at such an opportune time. When I look at peace operations, I look at the long arc of history, and of course, peace operations have ebbed and flowed. They have been a reflection of the state of international affairs. And today, certainly, there is a sense that it's ebbing. But one can think that the-- one can know that the night is always at its coldest just before the sun rises. So we should not despair. And not to despair, I want to go back to something that happened what, 70 years ago, 70 years ago, the Suez Crisis. At the time, two permanent members of the Security Council, my own country, France, and the United Kingdom, took, to put it mildly, some liberties with the charter. And it was still, when the United Nations were still a rather young organization, and one could have feared They could one could fear that that would mean the demise of this organization if the if the permanent members were supposed in the spirit of the charter to be the policemen of the world to ensure that the law, the international law would always be respected if they was the ones who created the problems. Today we have two other members of the permanent members of the Security Council who also are taking some very big liberties with the Charter. And I think there are lessons to be drawn from the experience of 70 years ago, because thanks to the enlightened leadership of Dag Hammarskjold, of Lester Pearson, of Ralph Bunche, and a few others, actually what could have been a fatal crisis for the United Nations turned into a moment that, in terms of peacekeeping, actually was a new phase of peacekeeping, where for the first time, armed troops were deployed in a peacekeeping setting. That was imagination and courage. And so I want to reflect a bit on what is needed today, and I will make just two points. One is about building a new consensus, because consensus does not happen by itself. And the other is about risk taking. So first, building a new consensus. I think we have to accept that in the present geopolitical context, we have to lower the ceiling of our ambitions. That is unpleasant to say, sorry, but it's a reality. But there are ways and ways to lower that ceiling. I think the present approach, for instance, to budgetary cuts is pretty bad because it's kind of homothetic cuts instead of using the cuts to assert priorities. And of course, I'm not naive. Asserting priorities immediately opens a can of worms because everybody has his priorities. Every member state wants to protect this or that. So you immediately get into trouble. It's much easier to just go with the flow and cut everywhere in the same proportions. That's very dangerous because it means that it's not just quantitative cuts, it's qualitative cuts. because it means that the good people who have opportunities to find other jobs, they see the writing on the wall and they look for another job and they find it. And the not so good people, the mediocre one, and let's be honest, they are mediocre people, they cling to their job because they have no alternative. And so you don't have just a quantitative decline of the UN, you have a qualitative decline, which is exactly what you don't want in a period of difficulty. So lowering the ceiling should mean being more focused. Maybe the United Nation is not going to be at this stage the kind of democratizing enterprise that it was in the years when I was in charge, because then there was a kind of unipolar moment And so there was a kind of standard treatment where, OK, you stabilize the situation, you have elections, and everybody lives happily ever after in a democratic setting. When I caricature a bit, but that was the ideal. I'm not saying that the United Nations should forget about human rights, but there are different visions of human rights in the world, and we have to accept that. I think we have to be more flexible on that. But lowering the ceiling must not mean that we abandon a floor of principles without which the U.N. will lose its soul and will lose its appeal, frankly. If the U.N. is just a forum where anything goes in a transactional world, the U.N. why go to the U.N.? There are many other ways to make deals. The UN has to stick to a few principles, and one of them is impartiality. If the UN is seen just as a prop for the powers to be in a particular setting, I think it can gain some points in the short term. In the longer term, it destroys itself. I think it's fundamental that the UN keeps a sense of impartiality. Now, that's easier said than done, because we have discussed this afternoon the question of the host country. And of course, even in Chapter 7 missions, the host country is an essential part of the picture. And it's a permanent negotiation. And it's not new. I saw it when, at the time, for instance, when we were deploying in Darfur. I mean, this was a painful, continuous negotiation with the government of Sudan at the time. But it has to be that you have to eyes, your eyes set on that political dimension, which is not just the state, which is, as was said this afternoon, a variety of actors. If you don't have that, if you have your eyes set just on the Security Council, it cannot work. And that's why it's so difficult. You have to do that permanent back and forth between the Security Council and the reality on the ground. So let's not abandon the floor. And let's, as we build a consensus, not forget that peacekeeping at the heart is a political enterprise. I'm stating the obvious, but there's a great tendency to ignore it. I am all for using the latest developments of technology, but that will be an easy agreement. It gets more difficult when you look, for instance, at the money dimension of conflict today, as how now money has become a driver of conflict in a number of situations, not the only driver, but it is a driver. Now, how do you address that? Well, you address that through panels of experts. but which need to be closely connected to the peace operation, whether it's a special political mission or full-fledged peace operation. And then you get into hot water because you have some powerful members who may not like the light of panels of experts. I think one has to fight for that. We talked about protection of civilians today. I think protection of civilians is essential because if a mission is seen not to protect civilians, it loses its political credibility. But at the same time, a mission that is just, that is only about protection of civilians, loses its longer term compass. It has to have a sense of what is behind the horizon once the peacekeeping operation has departed. Have you created a situation in which civilians will be secure? And so you cannot just see protection of civilians as the ultimate goal. It is an important dimension. It cannot be the ultimate goal. And so that brings me to my second point, and maybe at the end of the day, the most important one, the question of how you handle risk. Now, big organization. whether they are states or whether it's the United Nations, they are by construct risk averse. It's much better not to stick one's neck out because nothing happens to you than to stick your neck out where you court the risk of failure. And so being willing to take some calculated risk is an essential dimension of the success of peace operation, of the success actually of any kind of leadership, to be honest. And there, I think, much more can be done. It starts at the top. Either the Secretary-General empowers the whole house and sends the message that if people take risk, and sometimes they will fail, because taking risk is accepting the risk of failure. he will watch their back. He or she will watch their back. Or that message isn't there. And then the culture of risk aversion is just strengthened. So appointing people, empowering them, encouraging them to take some risks, some calculated risk is of the essence. And then it goes down the chain of command, the secretariat. There was some discussion, for instance, on planning. It's good to plan. And the secretariat is often afraid of planning because planning will leak. If you plan on Ukraine, if you plan on Iran, if you plan on any of those hot issues, and Sudan, it will leak. Well, that's the beauty of it, that it will leak. Because as it leaks, it means that the discussion will move. that some concrete questions will be raised. So I think it's important in a new UN to accept strategic planning and to encourage it in the midst of a conflict, because otherwise the conversation will remain stuck. And of course, as you go down, You have to -- that risk is not just a risk taken by the Secretary General, the risk taken by the member state, because it's a continuous dialogue with the member states. And I'm not naive. There's always a dilemma for the secretariat on when it puts forward a proposal, a report, on how -- there's always a thought, how much will the market bear? Will I look reckless if I suggest something that is not within the market, so to speak? And that's a delicate decision. It was my luck not to be at the United Nations during the Yugoslav wars. I came after that. But, of course, during the Yugoslav wars, some wrong decisions were made on, for instance, the number of troops that were required to protect safe areas, and the result was Srebrenica. So these negotiations, these choices that the Secretariat makes, and it makes them under pressure from the Security Council, they carry they have consequences. They can lead to significant loss of lives. And for that, you need an honest dialogue with the member states. And the member states themselves, the members of the Security Council, the troop-contributing countries, the membership at large, has to accept a certain level of risk. That means a certain level of failure. What is the level of failure that one accepts? Is it 20%? Is it 30%? I don't know. But there has to be clarity on that, because if you eliminate that, then nothing will happen.

And so my hope.

For the next Secretary-General is that there will be more of a culture of calculated risk, of accepting that we are in it together, and that the Secretariat is prepared to take its share of risks, but it's prepared to do it in an honest and frank dialogue with the Member States. Thank you.

Thank you so much for this. I think you sort of tied it all together very eloquently now, Jean-Marie, I think, talking about risk, risk taking, sharing the risk, and the different responsibilities that different functions in the system have around risk taking. the risk of strategic planning to be transparent with that is what you're saying that we need to do. And I think this is what Aditi was alluding to also in her in your first statement here that that to provide the options and allow for a discussion and and through those options, engage the member states. And therefore you can you can calculate these risks. And I so I think you brought it all together very, very, very well. I had an idea of a second round of discussion here. I have a few extra questions, but I think, I mean, we also, all of us want to be in time for the reception tonight and so on. So I think I will, you know, excuse me for skipping the second round of questions and instead taking the opportunity to invite Rebecca Greenspan to take the podium and and maybe reflect a little on what you've heard from the panel on suggestions, thoughts, ideas, perspectives that we have shared to send with an incoming SG and the role of peace operations. So please, Rebecca, the floor is yours, and thank you for being here with us.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. And thank you for the Challenges Annual Forum for inviting me and for allowing me to be, to hear this fantastic panel. So to all the panelists, really kudos. You know, you did a wonderful job. So let me see if I can say something that is, you know, that reflects my notes of what you said. First, I think that it's important to say that peace operations give practical expression to the founding purpose of the United Nations. And let's not forget that, you know, you all talk about peace operations, you all talk about the importance of it. And our charter commits us to preventing war, resolving disputes peacefully, and defending human dignity. And peace operations carry that commitment into places that are where violence threatens lives. And that's why civil protection is so important. They help protect civilians, sustain ceasefires, create space for political agreements, renewing them, must be central to renewing the United Nations. So you said, Ramasan, reform is urgent in peace operations, and also that is part of the reform of the UN. We should recognize what peace operations have achieved, but also be honest about what must change. And Jean-Marie, you referred to the Suez crisis, but we can refer to many other parts where peace operations were important. Central America, my region, knows that very well. Timor-Leste, Liberia, the African continent. UN missions have helped societies move beyond war. But today, conflicts are increasingly internationalized. Political settlements are harder to reach. You all said that. New technologies, Gregor, you referred to that very a lot of emphasis, are changing the battlefield. Missions face growing demands alongside shrinking resources and divided political support. So the Secretary General's review makes clear that our response must evolve. We cannot continue with business as usual. We heard that today. And I think that the review has very important points. that maybe won't need a new review, but will need clear implementation roadmaps. Let me say also that it's true that these reviews always come before the Secretary General is in place. Last time, Antonio Guterres received a review. This time, the new, and I like that you said she, thank you. will also receive the review. So some emphasis will change, but the review is important. The review central message is that peace operations need a renewed political foundation. I agree. You talked about the new consensus on peacekeeping. A mission needs a clear political purpose and sustain support from member states. The next Secretary General must work actively to build that support, bridge differences and open opportunities for negotiation. And I refer to that in my vision statement. But let me again emphasize that there is so much more that can be done with the SG's authorities. And you referred to that, Ramazan referred to the good offices of the SG. Aditi said very clear some of the things that the SG can do with the good offices without asking anybody. I like that part. And also this issue of risk taking that is very central to what I have said. We know that bureaucracies have to be risk averse. That's their nature. Yes, leadership is the one that has to bring the risk into the equation. And it's true, you know, and also there are cultural differences, you know, I remember discussing many times that in some cultures, if you. a fail in a business, for example, you will put it in your curricula. Yes. In other cultures, you will never receive again financial support. Yes. So it's true that the risk issue has to come from the top. It cannot come from from the bureaucracy itself. But the issue of empowering the people that works with you to do their job as part of the job being, you know, presenting risk options to you, alternatives, is very important. And I really believe that the UN has become very risk averse. And that has to change. You know, governments, if they fail 10 times, most of them won't be reelected, yes? The UN can assume the risk of failing and try again. The failure is not trying. Yes, it's the only failure we cannot afford. And I think that that part is essential. But there are also things that are not rocket science. What we heard today is not rocket science. It's things that we can do. Because many times when we think about reform and about changing, it looks like an impossible thing to do. It's not. Everything that you have said are things that are very reasonable, that can be really bring into implementation and practice. And so let's also take away this idea that this is so complicated that it's not possible to do. Yes, there are many things that can be done on mediation, on fact finding, on providing frank analysis and on presenting options for member states decisions. Aditi and Gregor were very clear on that. The enthusiasm, I like this idea of enthusiasm coming from DSG and also the issue of anticipation. And you're right, everything leaks in the UN, even the results of the Security Council, straw polls. And sometimes the leaks are OK, not all the time the leaks are OK. So we have to be careful, yes? And probably part of building the new coalition is building trust. So let me say this in a way that is not so diplomatic, but if we want the truth, you cannot punish the UN for the truth. And that is something that has to come also from the membership. If we go and say the peacekeeping mission cannot do these three pages of objectives, it doesn't have the resources, or it has tried and this situation has changed, don't punish the UN for saying that. Because part of the problem is that because that trust isn't there, we don't tell the truth to you, and you don't tell the truth to us.

And.

If we don't build the in the new coalition, we have to build also the trust to tell the truth, to bring the analysis, to bring the evidence. I heard, for example, in a discussion in ALPAC, yes, saying, well, I don't want to bring to you that you have to eliminate these 20 posts. that I don't need anymore because this is not according to the reality on the ground. I need 10 different ones. I don't want to eliminate the 20 before you commit to me that you will give me the other 10. And if we don't break that cycle, we won't be able not to plan better, not to bring better evidence to the membership decision and we won't be able to change the dynamic in which we are today. So the issue of trust to establish the enabling environment, honest dialogues, we said, well, have to come from building that trust and obviously from the impartiality that was mentioned so clearly. So, we must use the full range of tools available to us. Ramazan, you said we don't lack tools. We have to use the full range of tools available to us. The peace operations review encompasses peacekeeping operations, special political missions, a special envoy. regional offices and verification missions. We have those tools for us. Each offers different capabilities. My experience in negotiating the Black Sea agreements, and let me thank Turkey for that, because without you, we couldn't have done it. And it's that partnership with the regional actors, with regional organizations, that has also to be part of what we do.

But.

Let me say that that gave me, reinforced in me, the value of small teams, the right expertise, the flexibility, and the political backing that is needed for that to function. We should approach each crisis by asking what combination of diplomacy, presence, and capabilities can help create a path towards peace. And the mandates must be focused, realistic, and capable of changing the conditions on the ground. So the SG review calls for clear objectives, frank assessments, and regular adaptation. We should ask at every renewal, because the renewals are very automatic, yes? In every renewal, what progress is possible, which tasks remain essential, what needs to change, and how we make the UN more useful and accountable. So let me start wrapping up. Let me say that host countries partnership must rest on shared expectations and shared responsibility, it was said. The review process, stronger consultations and strategic compact to clarify commitments between the Security Council, host states and the Secretariat. We must listen carefully to national actors and communities. Many times, and I have said this, New York is like a blockage. I'm sorry to say, Jean-Marie. Like a wall between the ground and the membership, precisely because of the lack of trust that I said before. So my vision calls for the humility to recognize that solutions often lie among those closest to the conflict. We have to hear. And all this requires, as I said, better and integrated utilization of the UN's capacities for analysis and planning, including contingency planning that was already set. So let me finish saying that building momentum means turning this review and the perspectives of member states into decisions that will shape peace operations. The next SG will need to work with member states and partners to translate the recommendations of this review into a practical agenda. Stronger political backing, adaptable mandates, dependable resources, and measurable results. The courage of those who serve, they serve that commitment. And the people who look to the United Nations for protection deserves it too. Now, I have heard many times, and let me just take that out of my chest, that there are no technical fixes to the problems that ail peace operations, and that the issues are all political. And I don't believe that. I think that there are many things, like we have heard, that we can do, that is in our political will, in the political will of the leadership in the UN. And obviously, we need the political will of everybody, but we cannot avoid our responsibility. So we need both, the political agreement in membership, but also the political will in the UN to change and to be able to do better. So let's try to finish today and leave this forum ready to invest our political will in the peace operations we ask to carry for our common purpose. That will be a very good way to finish today. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Thank you again, Rebecca, for coming, for being with us, for sharing your reflections on what you heard, on building on what was said in the panel. And to you and to the other candidates running for this position, thank you for your readiness to serve and your courage to make yourself available to what is considered the most toughest, but also the most important job in the world. So thank you for that. And also my greatest appreciation to my fellow panelists for preparing and engaging and contributing to this discussion. I asked for a forward-looking conversation. I asked you to look at opportunities for change, for innovation, and I think you did exactly that. I think we did not you know, float away to objectives that are far beyond reach. But but we created, you know, a rooted agenda looking forward for an USG placing, using, forming the peace operations to that important part of the toolbox that we want it to be. So thank you very much for for your readiness and for your engagement. And thank you all for being here and listening to this conversation as well. Now, Benoit, I think I turn to you now for the closing of the forum. And then we have the reception tonight. I want to conclude that what will be said on my postcard, is that okay before I turn to you? My postcard says that the almost inconceivable unbalance between military and conflict prevention spending globally has shifted. And we're no longer, we see larger and more decisive political and financial support to diplomacy and prevention. Thank you, Secretary General, for helping us do the math. that prevention is much more cost effective than the military or humanitarian alternatives that lies down the line. Prevention is finally seen as the security investment it really is. So that will be set in the mailbox as well. Now, Benoit, your turn.

Thank you so much, Per. just a few words really to close this very interesting afternoon and say warm thank you to Sweden, Denmark, Pakistan, and to all our speakers, to all you, our participants, and in particular, I would say to the teams really at the Challenges Forum, at the Folke Bernadotte Academy, at the Swedish Mission, working tirelessly behind the scenes Without them, this would not have been possible. So I think let's give them a round of applause. You know who you are. So from the bottom of my heart, thank you so much for making this a reality, this CAF 26. And I hope we leave today not only with a number of reflections, but really with a sense of momentum. We talked about the review, and I think it gives us an important starting point. The task now for us is to turn these findings into action, into adaptation, and working together, member states, UN Secretariat, us, the partners, practitioners, experts, and really trying to engage proactively with a new UN leadership. There are simply too many conflicts that remain unaddressed, needs that remain unaddressed, and I think we just cannot afford to continue with business as usual. And this is really where the Challenges Forum wants to continue to provide our neutral meeting platform. and help this next phase of reflection and action, bringing our global partnership together with the wider UN and peace operations community. And we look forward to continue the discussion with you. You heard earlier this afternoon that we are already frantically preparing the next annual forum. And I really look forward to welcoming many of you to the Challenges Annual Forum 27. So with that, I would like to conclude this CAF 26 and thank you once again.