Launch of the Report: “Global Burden of Armed Violence 2015: Every Body Counts”

Mr. De Martino
Professor Krause
Dear Colleagues and Friends:


It is a pleasure to be with you for the launch of this very timely report. The need to better understand the dynamics and consequences of global armed violence cannot be over-emphasized, particularly during this transition from the Millennium Development Goals to the post-2015 development agenda. Measuring violence and its impact is as challenging as it is important and I would like, first and foremost, to thank the researchers and supporters who have made the report possible.

2015 is a year of critical importance as we take stock of our development efforts over the past fifteen years and shape the framework for the future. If we want a truly transformative framework, then we need to be serious about including the security dimension.

When we look at the news today, the far-reaching negative impact of violence and insecurity in undermining development is all too obvious. Sadly, but also unsurprisingly, the steepest declines in Human Development Index values in 2014 occurred in the Central African Republic, Libya and Syria – all of which experienced high levels of armed violence in a conflict setting.

But as the previous reports in this series have shown, conflict-related instances of armed violence, while making the news, have traditionally only been a small proportion of the global instances of armed violence. To tackle the violence, we need a holistic approach that not only reacts to crises but addresses the root causes of armed violence everywhere.

In many places of the world, we are still faced with a circular relationship of development and armed violence, where a lack of equitable development generates the conditions in which armed violence spreads, obstructing further development in the process.

The United Nations has made important progress in addressing the interrelated problems of armed violence and development, not least through the efforts of the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, the United Nations Development Programme, and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, as I am sure that we will hear more about later.

Clearly, creating a framework that effectively constrains armed violence is a key part of the United Nation’s efforts in promoting development. Yet, at the same time, we witness a continued decline in trust and confidence in national and international institutions that are there to hold perpetrators of armed violence accountable.

New approaches to curb armed violence and enable development are therefore needed. The discussions on the post-2015 development framework and the Sustainable Development Goals provide an opportunity for re-casting and expanding the scope of the discussion. To give but a few examples, new approaches need to address the fact that more people are moving to cities where we will find an increasingly large part of our armed violence challenge. The Technical Working Group on the confluence of urban safety and peacebuilding practice, which UNOG organizes together with the Geneva Peacebuilding Platform and UN HABITAT, can provide important input into this debate and will benefit from the report launched today.

Similarly, a new approach needs to have a strong gender dimension. Research has shown that the estimated economic cost of violence against women is somewhere between one and eight billion dollars annually.

But beyond the numbers and indicators, we need to make sure that we really address the human cost of armed violence. Adequately capturing this by indicators will be one of the main challenges for the Sustainable Development Goals. Looking at the indicators you and other researchers have developed to measure armed violence and its connection to development for this and other reports through a human rights lens can help us in creating a set of results-oriented indicators.

International Geneva brings together the expertise and resources to develop such indicators, collect data and monitor progress. In keeping with the unique way of doing business in Geneva, the Geneva Declaration has led the way in breaking down the silos of the “security” and “development” communities. We need to continue making use of the experience of the range of humanitarian, development and peacebuilding actors based in Geneva who deal with armed groups in diverse settings.

The Geneva Declaration on Armed Violence and Development envisaged to “achieve, by 2015, measurable reductions in the global burden of armed violence and tangible improvements in human security worldwide.” The results of the report launched today provide us with a very valuable opportunity to evaluate if we have delivered, and what we can improve in the post 2015 development agenda.

I wish you very fruitful discussions and would like to close by once again thanking and congratulating the Small Arms Survey, the Geneva Declaration Secretariat and all the other actors involved in bringing this report together.

Thank you very much.