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On September 18th, IPI, in partnership with UN75, The Group of Women Leaders, and the Center for Global Affairs at New York University, convened a virtual event commemorating the 75th anniversary of the United Nations with a diverse group of women leaders in a dynamic conversation on priorities and solutions for “recovering better” from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Following welcoming remarks by IPI Vice President Adam Lupel. Waheguru Pal Sidhu, Professor and Head of the UN Initiative at the Center for Global Affairs at NYU, opened the session positing three possible post-pandemic scenarios for the UN’s future, in order of preference.

The first was the UN’s “continued relevance as the center of the multilateral universe,” but this would come about “only if the UN is able to leverage the ongoing disruption, engage a host of sub-state and non-state actors, devise innovative negotiation approaches and address emerging challenges to recover better.”

The second would result if the UN simply opted for “business as usual,” in which case “it might be relegated to the sidelines and become just one of the multiplicity of forums to deal with 21st century challenges.”

The last, and, by Professor Sidhu’s admission, “most somber” was a UN “unable or unwilling to recover better” and consequently passing into “irrelevance or even demise.”

Professor Sidhu said that none of these outcomes was inevitable but that advancing the UN’s future would require “concerted collective action from the individual to the global level, especially if we want to preserve and strengthen the UN over the next 25 years.” He asked, “So how can we ensure the solidarity and sustained collective action for the outcome we want? Can the UN be the arena, agent, and actor that we need in order to build the future we want?”

In response, Maria Fernanda Espinosa, President of the 73rd session of the UN General Assembly and member of The Group of Women Leaders, Voices for Change and Inclusion, singled out the need for “leadership and concerted action.”

She cast a wide net in describing the leadership she had in mind. “It has to come from the whole of society. It is not only government or messianic leaders, but social activists:  women, journalists, opinion makers, scientists, academia, indigenous leaders. I think we all have a role to play in building this new social contract that we have the opportunity now to build, and this new social contract has to be between society, the economy, politics, and nature as well.”

She stressed the importance of a wide-ranging collective effort to shore up the distressed multilateral system. “It is not a self-operating machine, it does not have self-agency. The multilateral system at the UN is what we want it to be. It’s us who have the responsibility to craft the system to serve us and the interests of ‘we, the peoples.’”

Picking up on that point, Elizabeth Cousens, President and CEO of the United Nations Foundation, commented, “I sometimes say that multilateralism is the new realism. It’s not sentimental. It’s not because everybody gets along, it’s precisely because they don’t always get along that you need multilateral institutions and understandings.”

She lamented the “anger and distrust in politics that are deepening rather than overcoming our divisions” and focused her remarks on the uplift coming from “bright spots, pa­rticularly at the local level.”

Ambassador Cousens listed a random few of them, including the voluntary local reviews of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that have been created in more than 100 American cities, the state of Hawaii, and at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh; a new SDG “tracker tool” in Los Angeles allowing community organizations to connect the SDGs to “real lives and impacts;” an effort underway to unite more than 40 American cities behind an equitable response to COVID-19 and recovery; and a campaign by Walmart, the biggest employer in the US, to transform its supply chains to tackle equity, climate change, and gender issues. “That’s just a few snippets from this country, but there is obviously incredible leadership and bright spots around the world in cities and communities.”

What’s essential now, Ambassador Cousens said, is better coordination and broader encouragement. “So I look to a lot of these sources of leadership and innovation where we have real reserves of political power in other places, and the key is to connect them, to empower them, and to find new ways of bringing that leadership into the debate and platforms and actions that we have at a global level.”

Natalie Samarasinghe, UN75 Deputy and Chief of Strategy, said she feared at first that the coming of the pandemic would diminish enthusiasm and distract from the mission of UN75. “But that’s actually when we saw the initiative take off, and I don’t think it was just because people were bored during lockdown. It was because people saw this was a global crisis with far-reaching consequences that couldn’t be solved by their governments acting in isolation and that probably would require intensive efforts over many years and that no country, no matter how big or powerful, was going to be spared.”

She said that she was impressed that even the UN’s biggest backers saw the moment not as just an opportunity to restore the UN but one to make it better and more inclusive and accountable in the future. “They’re thinking long-term, what’s the impact on inequality and unemployment, how can we get more support for the hardest hit? I think it’s a powerful message of solidarity to take back to world leaders.”

In rebuilding the UN post-pandemic, Ms. Samarasinghe cautioned against sticking to just structural renovation and urged attention in addition to improving political leadership and making the world body more inclusive. “We often focus on structures, the composition of certain parts of the UN. That’s right. That’s hard. But even the most perfect system, the most perfect design, won’t make up for politics. We should focus on our leadership, good leadership at all levels, senior but mid-level too. And not paying lip service to include other voices, but actually doing it—meaningful, ongoing inclusion, embedding people, other stakeholders into the system. That will help deliver more evolutionary change, ongoing change and renewal, more than another sort of static re-design of the system would.”

Nisreen Elsaim, Chair of the UN Secretary-General’s Youth Advisory Group on Climate Change and Chair of the Sudan Youth Organization on Climate Change, cited the common observation that the pandemic had laid bare the desperate inequality in the world but stressed that in her part of the world, such inequality was rampant before COVID-19 and would persist afterward if it continued to be neglected.

“We’re always saying that the SDGs are about leaving no one behind, but that is actually what COVID did. So before thinking about the inequalities that COVID caused, we should first think of the inequalities that we had before, and realize that even if we find a cure, there will still be a lot of inequality happening,” she said.

Regarding her youth organization work, Ms. Elsaim said that young people welcomed all the attention and talk about including them in policy-making but were disappointed at the lack of follow-through on repeated promises. “As young persons, we have gotten used to being the trend, to having people say, ‘Young people are the fuel for the future, they are the change agents.’ But then when it comes to decision-making, when it comes to really implementing things in reality, then the young people, the ones who are actually trending, disappear.”

Ms. Elsaim said that involving young people was not just a moral responsibility, it was a measure that would make the UN more effective, innovative, and more broadly relevant. “What makes us special as young people is that we actually take different suggestions, we take the information we get, we empty our cup, we try to use different materials in order to make our world better. And last but not least, we are fearless.”

Jimena Leiva Roesch, Senior Fellow and Head of IPI’s Peace and Sustainable Development Program, moderated the discussion.

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Key messages:
• Africa has attracted a lot of attention in recent decades. China’s rising footprint in the continent  has  resulted  in  increased  engagement  from  other  global  powers,  including  the EU, leading to a ‘competition’. It needs to be leveraged to speed progress on the continent.
• The COVID-19 pandemic adds yet another layer to the already complex topic of China’s foreign policy. But it also offers an opportunity to carefully examine some of the dominant narratives on China-Africa and also appreciate the perspectives on the African side.
• Prevailing myths of Chinese engagement in Africa represent a caricatured view which is neither nuanced nor does justice to the wide range of experiences in this rapidly evolving relationship.
• The perceived need by the EU to rebalance relations with Africa is inexorably linked to the increased competition of interests in the continent, coming especially from China.
• In these debates, however, African countries should not be viewed as silent spectators as competition between world powers unfolds. They are keen to avoid getting caught in these rivalries, but have strategic levers at hand to push competing powers to cooperate for the development of their continent.
 

Key messages:
• Africa has attracted a lot of attention in recent decades. China’s rising footprint in the continent  has  resulted  in  increased  engagement  from  other  global  powers,  including  the EU, leading to a ‘competition’. It needs to be leveraged to speed progress on the continent.
• The COVID-19 pandemic adds yet another layer to the already complex topic of China’s foreign policy. But it also offers an opportunity to carefully examine some of the dominant narratives on China-Africa and also appreciate the perspectives on the African side.
• Prevailing myths of Chinese engagement in Africa represent a caricatured view which is neither nuanced nor does justice to the wide range of experiences in this rapidly evolving relationship.
• The perceived need by the EU to rebalance relations with Africa is inexorably linked to the increased competition of interests in the continent, coming especially from China.
• In these debates, however, African countries should not be viewed as silent spectators as competition between world powers unfolds. They are keen to avoid getting caught in these rivalries, but have strategic levers at hand to push competing powers to cooperate for the development of their continent.
 

Key messages:
• Africa has attracted a lot of attention in recent decades. China’s rising footprint in the continent  has  resulted  in  increased  engagement  from  other  global  powers,  including  the EU, leading to a ‘competition’. It needs to be leveraged to speed progress on the continent.
• The COVID-19 pandemic adds yet another layer to the already complex topic of China’s foreign policy. But it also offers an opportunity to carefully examine some of the dominant narratives on China-Africa and also appreciate the perspectives on the African side.
• Prevailing myths of Chinese engagement in Africa represent a caricatured view which is neither nuanced nor does justice to the wide range of experiences in this rapidly evolving relationship.
• The perceived need by the EU to rebalance relations with Africa is inexorably linked to the increased competition of interests in the continent, coming especially from China.
• In these debates, however, African countries should not be viewed as silent spectators as competition between world powers unfolds. They are keen to avoid getting caught in these rivalries, but have strategic levers at hand to push competing powers to cooperate for the development of their continent.
 

This article analyses the evolution of the European Union’s development policy in relation to civil society. Based on a review of overall policy trends, strategies and practices in Central Asia, it demonstrates how the EU’s development policy has gradually moved from a focus on European NGOs towards civil society organisations, broadly defined and increasingly associated with the private sector and local authorities. While the EU’s policy recognises the intrinsic value of civil society in all its diversity and promotes partnership, its operational practices show a pragmatic preference for working with professionalised organisations in service delivery roles.

This article analyses the evolution of the European Union’s development policy in relation to civil society. Based on a review of overall policy trends, strategies and practices in Central Asia, it demonstrates how the EU’s development policy has gradually moved from a focus on European NGOs towards civil society organisations, broadly defined and increasingly associated with the private sector and local authorities. While the EU’s policy recognises the intrinsic value of civil society in all its diversity and promotes partnership, its operational practices show a pragmatic preference for working with professionalised organisations in service delivery roles.

This article analyses the evolution of the European Union’s development policy in relation to civil society. Based on a review of overall policy trends, strategies and practices in Central Asia, it demonstrates how the EU’s development policy has gradually moved from a focus on European NGOs towards civil society organisations, broadly defined and increasingly associated with the private sector and local authorities. While the EU’s policy recognises the intrinsic value of civil society in all its diversity and promotes partnership, its operational practices show a pragmatic preference for working with professionalised organisations in service delivery roles.

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In 2017, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres proposed a new management paradigm to better enable the UN to address global challenges by giving decision-makers at the country level greater authority over their resources and thus greater speed and flexibility in setting and responding to priorities; reducing duplicative structures and increasing support for the field, including through the creation of new Departments of Operational Support (DOS) and Management Strategy, Policy, and Compliance(DMSPC); increasing accountability, and transparency; and reforming planning and budgeting processes.

While the reform is still a work in progress, it has continued to gain momentum, and implementation has become more systematic. More work is needed to fully realize the potential of the management reform, and ensure that it aligns with parallel reforms underway in the UN peace and security architecture and development system.

IPI, in partnership with the French Ministry for Armed Forces, held a virtual conversation among high ranking UN management officials and experts on September 17th to examine the implementation of the reform and its impact on peace operations, both from the perspectives of UN headquarters and the field.

Setting the backdrop for the discussion, Rear Admiral Hervé Hamelin, Deputy Director for International Security Affairs, Directorate General for International Relations and Strategy, French Ministry for Armed Forces, said that while the reform aims to respond to changes in peace operations mandates on operating environments, “stakeholders, more particularly from the field, continue to consider that it is not implemented to its fullest potential. Additional challenges continue as well to divide the international community, more particularly the capacity of member states to overcome divisions during the current 75th session of the UN General Assembly that will be key for the implementation of the reform on human resources.”

Wolfgang Weiszegger, former Director of Mission Support for the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) and author of the IPI paper Implementing the UN Management Reform: Progress and Implications for Peace Operations, gave a stark overview of how field operation management needs have piled up and why serious reform was needed. “If a UN field operation needs as little as a paper clip or as much as finance personnel, an aircraft, or a maritime fleet, management or support staff, DOS at UN headquarters, and mission support staff in the field better be included and involved in all discussions, and at each and every step of the way you need analysis, planning, execution, and evaluation processes. Otherwise, the resources required to implement a mission’s mandate just won’t be available at the right time and at the right quantity, quality, and cost. There’ll be no sufficient personnel, financial assets, infrastructure, materiel assets in place when and where they’re needed. That’s why it would be important to determine and leverage the converging streams of the management reform also with the streams of the peace and security reform, and the development reform since nothing works in isolation, and synchronicities and interdependencies need to be leveraged.”

Reviewing what had occurred so far in response to the reforms, Mr. Weiszegger said, “Managers have been empowered, accountability strengthened, processes streamlined, delegations of authority decentralized, and trust with member states improved, just to name a few.” A critical part that remained to be done, he stressed, was determining whether it has had a positive impact on people on the ground and people in areas of distress and conflict. But in general, he concluded, “The management reforms have taken off, are on the right track, and emphasis must now be placed on keeping the momentum going.”

Eugene Chen, Programme Management Officer in the Executive Office of the UN Secretary-General, flagged the high priority of the Secretary-General’s reform agenda by saying that its “ultimate objective” was “to maintain the relevance of the United Nations. The reforms seek to achieve this by enhancing the effectiveness and accountability of the organization in program delivery through all three tracks of reform, including management, peace and security, and development. The management reform focuses on decentralizing the management of the Secretariat and empowering senior managers, including heads of missions, such that the responsibility for implementing mandates is now aligned with authority to manage resources. The structural changes to the management architecture at headquarters are a catalyst for the decentralization.”

Mr. Chen detailed some of the changes and counseled against thinking that the reform was simply a rearrangement of functions rather than the sweeping fundamental shift that it is in the relationship between headquarters and the field. “Authority for the management of human and financial resources is delegated directly to senior managers, including heads of mission. Missions are therefore no longer mere extensions of the will of headquarters departments, but are now firmly in the driver’s seat. The newly established headquarters departments have no day-to-day decision-making authority over mission budgets and staffing but instead are responsible for supporting missions and other Secretariat entities through policy and guidance, advisory services, and administrative and logistical support.” He said that there are also new formalized mechanisms with representative field participation to ensure that policies and procedures are in line with recommendations from the field.

Mr. Chen argued that the new system was put to an early unexpected test with the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic, and had proved its value. “COVID-19 has therefore served as an important test to validate both the underlying concept and the new structures put in place via management reform.”

Picking up on that point, Rick Martin, Director, Division for Special Activities, UN Department of Operational Support (DOS) said, “I shudder to think where we would be with our previous structures and authorities in responding to the pandemic that has impacted across the Secretariat and particularly in our field missions.” The UN was particularly vulnerable, he noted, with peace operations in nine of the 11 countries most affected by COVID-19, and more than 1200 confirmed cases and 18 colleagues lost, many of them police and military officers living and working in congregate high-density situations.

Among the gains he listed from the reforms were:

• Having supply chain management integrated across procurement and logistics management. “They were in separate departments in the past, and that shouldn’t matter, but unfortunately in our world it does.”
• Aligning what has traditionally been the medical treatment capacities with occupational safety and health. “I can tell you that quite often when we talk about the pandemic now, we talk less about the medical response and more about occupational safety and health, given the threat to the health of our personnel.”
• Creating a single entry point on uniform capability support for peace operations.
• Having a more consolidated approach in standing capacities now for training.
• Streamlining recruitment and onboarding processes.
• Closing gaps in what resources peace operations are able to access on an immediate basis.
• Providing support to the resident coordinators, who are now being brought into the Secretariat.
• Establishing a standing search capacity of existing staff across the whole Secretariat that can de deployed to an incident or transitional requirement needing additional capacity.
• “A genuine convergence between the Secretary-General’s reform pillars—management reform, peace and security architecture, and the development system reforms—which has been made possible by having a single Department of Operational Support.”

Olga de la Piedra, Director, Office of the Under-Secretary-General, UN Department of Management, Strategy, Policy and Compliance (DMSPC) said that the enhanced delegation of authority to the heads of missions had allowed her department to bring decision- making closer to the point of delivery so rapidly that some people in the field were slow to act on it. “One of the paradigms that are still shifting is for our colleagues to realize that they do have the authority to take certain decisions that they didn’t have in the past. We saw at first that it was very gradual, but over the last six months, we’ve seen colleagues embrace this delegation of authority more actively, and decision-making is moving much faster.”

Heralding an example of a peacekeeping practice becoming a model for the whole organization, she said that DMCPC now has a clear mandate for oversight over conduct and discipline functions across the global Secretariat. “So the rigorous approach it had been implementing for peacekeeping in the past is now standardized across the Secretariat at large. This is learning from peacekeeping adapted to the whole organization.”

Amadu Kamara, Director of Mission Support, UN Assistance Mission in Somalia (UNSOM) and Director of the UN Support Office for Somalia (UNSOS) said the UN’s operations in Somalia provided a good testing ground for the reform. “We support, for example, about 30,000 military personnel engaged in active combat. It’s doesn’t get more dynamic than that. So it was obvious that the regulatory framework was not compatible with the dynamics and rigors of the operating environment. The management efforts with the enhanced delegation of authority to heads of UN entities have afforded scope for UNSOS and UNSOM to address many arising issues, which previously would have had to be referred to multiple operational units and liaisons at headquarters for consideration and consultation without the attendant urgency required to meet demands on the ground.”

Mr. Kamara said that the new flexibility helped mission heads with specific chores like staff recruitment but also in more philosophical ways. “One of the benefits of the management reform, often unrecognized, is that this has led to a subtle shift in the mindset of administrators from a rules- and regulations-based mentality to using the regulatory framework as an enabling mechanism for operational decision-making.”

Suggesting further reforms, he said the delegation of authority might have to be “customized” to suit particularly volatile environments like Somalia and that consideration should be given to applying a probationary period for newly hired personnel. “To put it succinctly, our recruitment is out front, we take a very long time, we are very laborious to be careful to do recruitment, but once that person comes on to the ground and it doesn’t work out, we can never get rid of them. Not everybody can work in the field, and you will never know who will fit in until they actually do the job.”

Jake Sherman, IPI Senior Director of Programs, moderated the discussion.

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“Where a crisis moves in, inclusion moves out, but there is no law of nature governing this,” declared Swedish Foreign Minister Ann Linde, making the point that although the COVID-19 pandemic threatens to set back the goals of the Women, Peace, and Security agenda, it should instead be a factor motivating a redoubled effort to push for the agenda’s full implementation. “Diplomacy and dialogue are needed more than ever in the international response to the pandemic and in our efforts towards sustaining peace,” she said. “The Women, Peace, and Security agenda is crucial.”

Ms. Linde was the opening speaker at a September 16th high-level virtual forum co-sponsored by IPI and the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs titled “Implementing Transformative Action: Prioritizing the Women, Peace, and Security Agenda in a Time of Pandemic.” She noted that women’s organizations were already responding vigorously to the societal challenges posed by COVID-19, intensifying their own peace work, providing support for humanitarian aid flow, facilitating information exchange, and establishing “new ways of connecting.”

She argued that their work needs to be “recognized as the community resilience fabric it is and needs to be connected to the highest decision-making levels.” For example, she said, women civil society representatives should be entrusted with briefing the United Nations Security Council and other decision-making bodies on country-specific matters, as well as other security threats such as terrorism and climate change. “There is no need for the pandemic to be used as an excuse to decrease this participation.”

Rosemary DiCarlo, UN Under-Secretary-General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs, acknowledged that the pandemic had overshadowed many of the UN’s global priorities like the commemoration of the 20th anniversary of landmark Security Council resolution 1325 and had had a significant impact on global social-economic well- being and on key matters of peace and security, but particularly so for women. “Many of the economic costs of the pandemic are disproportionately affecting women, who are overrepresented in some of the sectors hardest hit by shutdowns, and ensuing layoffs and cuts. Gender-based violence, particularly in the home, surged around the world as COVID-19 lockdowns became necessary.”

Ms. DiCarlo said that digital technology had enabled UN officials in the field to maintain contact and consultation with otherwise marginalized women but had at the same time served to reveal the extent of their exclusion and discrimination. “Virtual spaces mirror the inequalities that exist in the offline world. Women and girls in conflict-affected settings often lack equal access to technology and are subject to online harassment and intimidation that can have real-world consequences for their safety.  Supporting access to technology and combating online bullying must therefore be prioritized as fundamental to ensuring women’s participation in public and political life.”

A top priority was funding, she said. Her department allocates 17 percent of its extra-budgetary resources to projects supporting women, peace, and security; it has created a “gender marker” to track the mainstreaming of gender issues in all of its initiatives, and the UN Peacebuilding Fund devotes 40 percent of its total investments to “gender-responsive” undertakings. “Allocating adequate, predictable, and sustained financing must be a joint priority for all of us to achieve the Women, Peace, and Security agenda.”

Alvin Botes, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of South Africa, highlighted the disconnect between the forefront role that women play in peacemaking and the low level of their inclusion in peacebuilding leadership. “They are the majority in the health sector and informal economy, but at the same time, few have been included in national COVID-19 response plans,” he said.

Mr. Botes proposed that a certain percentage of both official development assistance for conflict–area countries and of spending by the UN Peacebuilding Fund be earmarked for women, peace and security, with dedicated budgets in National Action Plans or equivalent frameworks. He called for more partnerships between governments and women NGOs and greater involvement across the board of young women.

Amat al-Alim Alsoswa, former Minister for Human Rights in Yemen, said the experience of women in her country, site of what the UN has identified as the world’s leading humanitarian crisis, illustrated both the value of women peacebuilders and how they are ignored by people in decision-making positions. “Yemeni women have been active local mediators throughout the conflict, and, in response to COVID-19, women have worked through villages, municipal councils, and the private sector to manufacture and distribute PPE [personal protective equipment], masks, and protective clothing to medical staff and the public. They have also negotiated the release of prisoners from detention centers to reduce the spread of infection. Women doctors and nurses have been among the first responders at the peak of the pandemic, and young women entrepreneurs continue to be active participants.”  She paused for emphasis. “These efforts all were not initiated top-down.”

She contended that while the UN had pursued peace in Yemen “with dedication and sincerity, the well-established standards of Women, Peace, and Security, with respect to building sustainable peace, have been given no more than pro forma attention. This is a common trend; it’s not only related to peace negotiations. UN envoys’ mandates need to clearly include women in peace negotiations. It is not enough to give a voice to women, often after considerable additional pressure, unless they have their rights and also they can vote. Excluding women because one or more of the warring parties refuses to accept the woman’s presence is unacceptable.”

Sanam Naraghi Anderlini, Founder and CEO of International Civil Society Action Network (ICAN) and Director, LSE Centre for Women, Peace, and Security, said that independent women peacebuilders merited special consideration and explained why. “They are a very unique community of people. They run to the problem when others are running away. They are the bridge, they are interlocutors, they are trusted. They represent the voice of communities and people and marginalized sectors of society, which neither governments who are bombing their own people nor armed groups that are also bombing their own people, do. In a sense, women peacebuilders have taken on the responsibility to protect, without having the power of the gun, or having the power of the political elite. They need to be recognized as actors in conflicts, and as independent delegations at peace tables. That’s the next step of where we need to go.”

Kaavya Asoka, Executive Director, NGO Working Group on Women, Peace, and Security, said during the question-and-answer period that despite the adoption of numbers of resolutions endorsing women’s rights and participation, seven out of ten peace processes still exclude women, and only 14 to 22 percent of peace agreements actually include gender provisions. Saying the movement was facing a crisis of political will, she asked, “How do we translate these rhetorical commitments that we’ve heard from the international community over a period of 20 years into real and concrete action? We’ve heard of technical solutions, like including women through virtual spaces, but the fact is what we actually need are political solutions to address the core problem of women’s participation that we continue to confront 20 years since the adoption of Resolution 1325.”

Foreign Minster Linde noted that much research had been done on the added durability of peace agreements where women were active participants. “When I was in Aden, I met so many women who had ideas, who had a lot of constructive ways of how to go forward in this terrible conflict. But they were not used in a way that would be so good for the peace process, and it makes me really frustrated. That’s also why I think the Women, Peace, and Security agenda needs to be pushed. All of us, both in government and in civil society, need to really push this issue, not as some little thing you do, as we say, ‘with your left hand’ but something that should be at the center, because it gets results, and it makes final peace agreements much more sustainable.”

Martha Delgado, Undersecretary for Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights in the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs, pointed out that her country had officially adopted a feminist foreign policy and was an active member of the global network of focal points on women, peace, and security, promoting joint international efforts to implement its agenda. “We need to recover from the current pandemic with a renewed commitment not to leave anyone behind, and to fully realize that we need a more integrated, multi-sector and gender transformative framework to conflict prevention and resolutions on sustaining peace in which the leadership of women is a reality and not just an aspiration.”

The forum also served to launch an IPI Women, Peace, and Security issue brief by Masooma Rahmaty, IPI Policy Analyst, and Jasmine Jaghab, entitled Peacebuilding during a Pandemic: Keeping the Focus on Women’s Inclusion.

IPI Vice President Adam Lupel moderated the discussion.

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This Policy Brief discusses Africa’s diversification and policies of economic transformation through the lens of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) which is a potentially important vehicle for speeding up the continent’s diversification and a lever for win-win G20-Africa economic relations. The Brief argues in favour of broadening Africa-G20 cooperation that is currently limited to a few initiatives and an observer status for the African Union (AU) and New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD). Moreover, the AfCFTA presents opportunities for both G20 and Africa’s leadership to add value to development of Africa’s young and growing population as well as boost its legitimacy, credibility and relevance to global development through shaped future trade relations.

This Policy Brief discusses Africa’s diversification and policies of economic transformation through the lens of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) which is a potentially important vehicle for speeding up the continent’s diversification and a lever for win-win G20-Africa economic relations. The Brief argues in favour of broadening Africa-G20 cooperation that is currently limited to a few initiatives and an observer status for the African Union (AU) and New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD). Moreover, the AfCFTA presents opportunities for both G20 and Africa’s leadership to add value to development of Africa’s young and growing population as well as boost its legitimacy, credibility and relevance to global development through shaped future trade relations.

This Policy Brief discusses Africa’s diversification and policies of economic transformation through the lens of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) which is a potentially important vehicle for speeding up the continent’s diversification and a lever for win-win G20-Africa economic relations. The Brief argues in favour of broadening Africa-G20 cooperation that is currently limited to a few initiatives and an observer status for the African Union (AU) and New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD). Moreover, the AfCFTA presents opportunities for both G20 and Africa’s leadership to add value to development of Africa’s young and growing population as well as boost its legitimacy, credibility and relevance to global development through shaped future trade relations.

This year was expected to be an opportunity to assess the past twenty years of progress on the women, peace, and security (WPS) agenda. Instead, it has been upended by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has dominated the international community’s attention and put recent gains for WPS at risk. One of the areas most at risk is the participation of women in peacebuilding efforts and peace processes, which is already a part of the WPS agenda where progress has been limited.

This paper looks into what actions states and international actors can take to ensure women’s participation in peacebuilding and peace processes during the pandemic. It draws on two virtual meetings—one at the ministerial level and one at the ambassadorial level—convened in partnership with the government of Sweden. Based on these meetings, the paper identifies five key factors that could help the UN and its member states keep the focus on women peacebuilders during the pandemic:

1. State leadership on WPS in multilateral fora: In the face of the pandemic, it is critical for UN member states to defend recent gains made in implementing the WPS agenda in multilateral fora, especially the Security Council.
2. Women’s participation in formal peace processes: While the pandemic has made it even more difficult for many women to participate in formal peace processes, the normalization of virtual convenings could be an opportunity to bring more women to the table.
3. Protection and security of women peacebuilders: The UN and its member states have a role to play in providing women peacebuilders both physical protection and international legitimacy and recognition.
4. Financing for women peacebuilders: The pandemic has made funding even more of a challenge for women peacebuilders. Donors should recognize the important role of women’s organizations in the pandemic response and recovery when deciding how to allocate funding.
5. Data-driven responses: There is a need for a coordinated, risk-sensitive approach to data collection to ensure that the COVID-19 response reflects an understanding of how the pandemic affects women.

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Climate change and the associated climate-related security risks increase instability and have significant adverse effects on peacebuilding. Within the UN, however, there is a lack of consensus on which organs are most appropriate to respond to climate-related security risks. Most of the bodies addressing climate change do not address its intersection with peace and security, while many member states have concerns about the role of the UN Security Council on climate change. In this context, the UN Peacebuilding Commission (PBC) seems well placed to complement and advance discussions on climate-related security risks in other UN bodies, including the Security Council.

This paper—a joint publication of IPI and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI)—aims to identify areas and ways in which the PBC is preventing and mitigating climate-related security risks and to map the political positions of PBC members on this topic. It also looks at opportunities for the PBC to strengthen its engagement on climate-related security issues.

The paper identifies a number of attributes that uniquely position the PBC as a forum for states to seek international support for addressing climate-related security challenges: it emphasizes national ownership, has a mandate to work across the three pillars of the UN, brings together a wide range of UN organs, and convenes relevant stakeholders from within and outside the UN system. The paper concludes that a gradual but steady approach to addressing climate-related security risks in the PBC is likely to encourage more countries to seek its support on these issues.

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The lifestyles of the growing middle classes in the Philippines have a potentially significant impact on the environment. To what extent and how this happens depends on the attitudes, aspirations and actual consumption practices of the middle classes. Environmental knowledge, environmental concern, wealth and international experience present the key concepts for the exploratory analysis of consumer behaviour. The contribution draws on a unique combination of quantitative and qualitative data, using national and city-level household surveys as well as insights from focus group discussions. The study finds that higher wealth levels and environmental concern influence reported energy saving behaviours. Younger, female and environmentally concerned consumer also tend to choose more sustainable modes of transport, but the correlation is weak. Overall, more carbon intensive, unsustainable consumption patterns can be expected as households move up the socioeconomic ladder. While the middle classes score fairly high on the measurement scales of environmental concern and knowledge, education, savings and income security matter more to them in day to day life. For prospective sustainable consumption policies, our results imply that more action that draws on behavioural insights is needed to overcome the knowledge-action gap.

The lifestyles of the growing middle classes in the Philippines have a potentially significant impact on the environment. To what extent and how this happens depends on the attitudes, aspirations and actual consumption practices of the middle classes. Environmental knowledge, environmental concern, wealth and international experience present the key concepts for the exploratory analysis of consumer behaviour. The contribution draws on a unique combination of quantitative and qualitative data, using national and city-level household surveys as well as insights from focus group discussions. The study finds that higher wealth levels and environmental concern influence reported energy saving behaviours. Younger, female and environmentally concerned consumer also tend to choose more sustainable modes of transport, but the correlation is weak. Overall, more carbon intensive, unsustainable consumption patterns can be expected as households move up the socioeconomic ladder. While the middle classes score fairly high on the measurement scales of environmental concern and knowledge, education, savings and income security matter more to them in day to day life. For prospective sustainable consumption policies, our results imply that more action that draws on behavioural insights is needed to overcome the knowledge-action gap.