Opening of Geneva Peace Week 2016

Mr. Daccord [Director General, ICRC]
Ms. Whitfield [Officer in Charge, Policy and Mediation
Division, DPA]
Mr. Wennmann [Executive Coordinator, Geneva
Peacebuilding Platform]

Ladies and gentlemen:

It is my great pleasure to represent the Director-General of the UN Office at Geneva, Mr. Michael Møller, at this opening ceremony of the third edition of Geneva Peace Week. The Director-General would have very much liked opening the Peace Week in person as he attaches great importance to this cross-cutting initiative. His excuse for missing this important event today could however not be more fitting, as he is accompanying the Secretary-General to the Cyprus talks nearby. Mr. Møller sends the following message, and I quote:

“It is great to see the success story of Geneva Peace Week entering its third edition. As in previous years, we are organizing the Week jointly with the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, and the Geneva Peacebuilding Platform, in collaboration with the Swiss Confederation. I wholeheartedly thank these and many other partners for making this a truly collective initiative.

When we launched Geneva Peace Week in 2014 together with our partners, we were curious to see how actors would respond. In the first edition, we had about a dozen events which we could easily summarize on an excel spreadsheet. Not even three years later, we now have a full programme with 47 events over five days summarized on a dedicated website, bringing together around 150 experts and a large audience from the general public. 62 participating organizations are involved in the planning of the different events. It is safe to say that International Geneva responded with an overwhelming interest in enhanced collaboration to promote peace.

Geneva Peace Week brings together Permanent Missions, International Organizations, NGOs and the private sector, here in Geneva, the City of Peace. It connects and highlights the work of these actors for a more peaceful future.

This year’s edition again covers a multitude of topics. As the international community has embarked on the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, many of the events are connected to the Sustainable Development Goals, going beyond Goal 16 on peaceful and inclusive societies. Experts will be discussing how water, food and other resources can affect conflict. They will look at the role of inequalities and how to involve youth and to educate for peace. And being in Geneva, human rights are obviously featuring on the programme of peace week.
By drawing a connection between development and peace, the events over the course of the week will help us shift towards more preventive policies and inclusive approaches. In a globalized world, war affects everyone, and everyone can affect peace. It is a collective endeavour, but the quantity and complexity of current crises continue pushing many of our humanitarian, mediation and peacebuilding agencies to their limits and beyond. The reviews of the UN’s work in peacekeeping and peacebuilding have emphasized the need for prevention to get ahead of the curve.

Geneva Peace Week recognizes this including through the event on 9 November jointly organized by the UN Department for Political Affairs, the World Bank and UNOG about “Development and conflict prevention”. And this is just one of 47 events that are promising to help the international community adopt new perspectives and approaches.

Innovation is also going to be at the centre of events on various new technologies, measurement methodologies and cyber-security. Geneva continues to be a major hub of internet and telecommunications governance and discussions in this domain are going to grow in importance in the years to come. This year’s edition even contains an event looking at neuroscience and mediation, once again showing what is possible when different actors work across traditional silos.
In short, Geneva Peace Week 2016 covers a wide range of topics from mediation to crime, to the role of religion and peaceful resistance and many more. In doing so, events are touching on situations in countries and continents all around the world.

But this year, we want to go even further. In 2013, we had one day that drew together the actors working to promote peace at the first ever Geneva Peace Talks. In 2014, we had the first Peace Week. Today, our colleagues from the Geneva Peacebuilding Platform are launching the Geneva Peace Calendar which goes beyond the 5 days of the Peace Week.

The Geneva Peace Calendar is a pilot project to achieve an even higher degree of information sharing of the priorities and projects that all the different actors promoting peace across International Geneva envisage for 2017. So far, more than 20 entities have given feedback, which is an impressive starting point. The Calendar has strong potential to expand the space for synergies throughout the year and I encourage everyone to contribute to make it just as successful as Geneva Peace Week.

We have a shared responsibility for our common future. Let us use this opportunity to work together pursuing our common objectives of sustainable development for more peaceful societies. I wish all of us a fruitful Geneva Peace Week 2016.”

That was the end of the Director-General’s message. I join the Director-General in wishing everyone an exciting and productive Geneva Peace Week and thank you for your attention.