The United Arab Emirates (UAE) would like to thank Saint Vincent and the Grenadines for bringing the Council’s attention to the need for holistic approaches to conflict and insecurity, integrating the three pillars of the United Nations. The COVID-19 pandemic and climate change illustrate that silos do not apply in the field, as both affect the conditions that lead to and amplify conflict and violence, from hunger to the disruption of basic services, unemployment, competition for resources, and displacement.

A core element of the UAE’s domestic and foreign policy is prevention and future preparedness, and we believe that constant horizon scanning is critical to understanding contemporary drivers of conflict and insecurity. These threats add an additional layer of vulnerability to many communities already facing persistent challenges including poverty, extremism and organized crime.

As we all commit our political efforts and resources to “build forward better”, it is important to take this opportunity to shape our institutions’ practices so that they are fit for purpose in a world where phenomena like climate change and pandemics are blurring the lines between different arms of the international system.

We would like to share four recommendations on how the Council and its partners can work toward holistic approaches to peace and security and contribute to more equitable, more resilient and more inclusive societies.  

First, we welcome the Security Council’s greater engagement with other entities of the United Nations and encourage growing synergies. In recent years, the Peacebuilding Commission has provided increasingly substantive input ahead of Security Council mandate renewals, and the ECOSOC has engaged on several issues on the Security Council’s agenda on an ad-hoc basis. These relationships should be strengthened, and we look forward to the recommendations of the 2020 Review of the UN Peacebuilding Architecture, particularly on enabling collective outcomes.

Second, while it is critical that coordination takes place at headquarters-level, it is essential at the field level. We want to emphasize the importance of the UN delivering as one and incentivizing

coordination and information-sharing, particularly in the field. A key area of potential development is improving the Security Council’s relationship with field-based actors beyond the leadership of peace operations, notably including Resident Coordinators and representatives of UN agencies, funds and programmes.

Third, health crises and the impacts of climate change, have one thing in common. They are often predictable.  We would like to reiterate our call for further development of the UN’s anticipatory action capabilities. Increasing awareness about emerging threats can help us all adapt mandates and budgets to prevent conflict and its drivers. We commend OCHA, WFP, the World Bank, and other partners for their investments in modeling and analytics to drive disbursement of funding in advance of credibly-predicted disasters and stresses. The initial results show that anticipatory action saves both lives and money. 

Lastly, unless there is national ownership, little of what we discuss here will deliver tangible results. The multilateral system isonly as strong as its Member States, since they are the ones spearheading the policies and programs that will help us all shoulder our collective responsibility. As one small example to that end, the UAE has been proud to support both preventative and reactive work against COVID-19, contributing more than 1,500 metric tons medical aid to 118 countries, many of them on the Council’s agenda. The pandemic, like climate change, underscores that with a growing range of insecurity drivers, no one is safe until everyone is safe.

We look forward to strategizing with Member States and the UN so that the institution’s many branches are working together to maximize value for peace and security.

Thank you, Mr. President.