On 30 May 2024, UNU will host “The Peacebuilding Architecture Review: Building and Sustaining Peace in 2025 and Beyond”, a conversation with Elizabeth Spehar, UN Assistant Secretary-General for Peacebuilding Support. This event will start at 18:30 in the 2F Reception Hall at the UNU Headquarters in Tokyo.
Since the establishment of the Peacebuilding Commission in 2005, every five years UN Member States review the peacebuilding architecture including the work of the Peacebuilding Support Office, the Peacebuilding Fund and the Peacebuilding Commission. Terms of reference for the 2025 review were agreed on 30 April 2024 and ask, inter alia, for the review to "take stock of the work done by the UN on peacebuilding and sustaining peace" and to be "forward-looking, aiming at further improving the work of the UN on peacebuilding and sustaining peace, with appropriate emphasis on implementation and impact at the field level".
The 2025 Peacebuilding Architecture Review will take place during a period of unprecedented global challenges including deep geopolitical fractures and deepening conflict risks in many parts of the world. In the past few years, the incidence of armed conflict globally has resurged after two decades of decline. More people died in armed conflict in 2022 than at any time since the mid-1990s.
At the same time, countries affected by fragility, conflict and violence account for an ever-growing share of the world’s extreme poor; 63% of the world’s extreme poor will be in fragile countries by 2030. Not a single conflict-affected country is on track to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals related to hunger, good health or gender equality. Efforts to end global poverty are increasingly contingent on, and overlapping with, efforts to prevent violence and conflict, and sustain peace.
Elizabeth Spehar will join UNU Chief of Staff Michael Baldock for a conversation looking at the UN’s role in peacebuilding, which aims to prevent the outbreak, escalation, recurrence or continuation of conflict. What might we hope for peacebuilding in 2025 and beyond? And importantly, how can Japan provide support?
The UNU Conversation Series aims to foster audience participation; you are encouraged to engage with the speakers during the conversation and at the reception that will follow, where all audience members are invited to enjoy hors d’oeuvres and drinks while exchanging ideas and making new contacts.
Please note that this event will be in English. Advance registration (by 29 May at 15:00) is required.
Please be prepared to present identification at check-in.
About the speaker
Ms. Elizabeth Spehar has more than 35 years of experience in international and political affairs, having worked at United Nations Headquarters and in the field leading political, development, peacebuilding and conflict prevention initiatives. Before joining the United Nations, Ms. Spehar was a senior official with the Organization of American States (OAS) for more than 12 years, working to promote democracy and develop the organization’s dialogue and conflict resolution instruments.
