Ministry of Defence
United Nations peacekeeping is an indispensable part of the international communitys response to threats to international peace and security. Effective prevention of, and response to, many of todays threats to international peace and security require partnerships with other countries. UN peacekeeping is one of the most tangible examples of effective partnership and is unique in its ability to leverage the strengths of many states. UN peacekeeping can contribute to the resolution of conflicts, prevent their recurrence and create the stability necessary for peace to flourish. Peacekeeping is in the national security interest of all nations. We salute the contribution of the brave men and women that serve in peacekeeping missions, and remember with sadness those who have sacrificed their lives in support of this cause.
Modern conflicts demand modern responses. Peacekeeping must be deployed as part of a broader strategy and must be more field-oriented and people-centred. Todays peacekeepers must be able to successfully implement their mandates, including protecting civilians, themselves and their assets. We reaffirm the basic principles of peacekeeping, including consent of the parties, impartiality, and the non-use of force except in self-defence and in defence of the mandate, noting that these are consistent with mandates authorised by the Security Council that seek to tackle new challenges faced by peacekeeping operations, such as force protection and safety and security, protection of civilians, and asymmetric threats. We welcome this opportunity for Defence Ministers and their representatives to come together to ensure sustained follow-up to the Leaders Summit on Peacekeeping and to discuss practical improvements to the ways in which peacekeeping missions are conducted.
We recall the report of the High-Level Independent Panel on Peace Operations and the report of the Secretary-General on the implementation of the Panels recommendations. We also recall the high-level review of the implementation of Security Council resolution 1325 (2000), the report of the Advisory Group of Experts on the Review of the Peacebuilding Architecture. We underline the importance of improving UN policing and note the findings of the External Review of the UN Police Division.
We must always strive to ensure that peacekeeping is as effective as possible, and evolves to meet todays challenges, and the challenges of tomorrow. That calls for improvements in three areas, the three Ps of peacekeeping: planning, pledges and performance. Modern peacekeeping demands improved political and military planning throughout the mission lifecycle, with clear and sequenced mandates. It needs Members States to pledge well trained and equipped personnel that give missions the capability to deliver those mandates. And it needs high levels of performance from civilian and uniformed peacekeepers, underpinned by effective and accountable leadership. Achieving progress across these three areas is of critical importance to all Member States, and is dependent on cooperation and partnership built on mutual trust among Members of the Security Council, troop- and police-contributing countries and the UN Secretariat so that decisions taken on peacekeeping benefit from the views of those serving in the field.
Pledges
We welcome the outstanding contribution made by the Leaders Summit on Peacekeeping in New York in September 2015. We also recall the Chiefs of Defence Conference in March 2015 and the United Nations Chiefs of Police Summit (UN COPS) in New York in June 2016. We reaffirm our support for the Leaders Summit on Peacekeeping declaration, which recommits us to working together to improve peacekeeping.
We welcome the pledges made by 52 Member States and international organisations at the Leaders Summit, and the 31 new pledges that have been made since then, including those by Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Bhutan, Burundi, Brazil, Canada, Chad, Egypt, France, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Greece, Guatemala, Hungary, Ireland, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Lithuania, Mongolia, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Singapore, Tanzania, Tunisia, Zambia, and those made at UN COPS in June 2016. Collectively these pledges provide an exceptional step forward in the capabilities available to the UN. We call on Member States and the Secretariat to work together to ensure these commitments are ready for deployment and encourage all Member States to ensure that their pledges are ready and available for use by registering them through the new Peacekeeping Capability Readiness System. We call on all Member States to offer further pledges that meet identified capability gaps.
We welcome the establishment and work of the Strategic Force Generation and Capability Planning Cell and call on the Secretary-General to ensure it is able to perform fully its functions, and appreciate the work of the Office of Military Affairs and the Police Division and ask the Secretary-General to continue to proactively identify and address capability gaps for the delivery of current peacekeeping mission mandates, as well as future anticipated capability needs.
We need peacekeepers that are capable and willing of rapidly responding to emerging crises. We welcome the commitments of Member States at the London Ministerial to make their military and police units available for rapid deployment, and encourage others to come forward with similar units that are deployable within 30, 60 or 90 days. We urge the Secretariat to consider a range of methods to adequately encourage troop- and police-contributing countries to maintain rapidly deployable stand-by units. We urge all troop- and police-contributing countries to streamline their deployment processes and call on the Secretariat to facilitate the process of pledges moving to higher states of readiness. We call on the Secretariat and the troop- and police-contributing countries to ensure that at least 12,000 troops and police are at Level 3 of the PCRS by the end of 2016 and that 4,000 of those are pledged at the Rapid Deployment Level. We further call on the Secretary-General to ensure that the UN, in particular the Departments of Management, Field Support and Peacekeeping Operations, has the systems in place to deploy, absorb and sustain these newly pledged assets rapidly and in accordance with the specific needs of individual missions, including in such areas as airlift, rapid engineering support, force headquarters and police and civilian recruitment.
We recognise the indispensable role of women in UN peacekeeping, and in conflict resolution as a whole, and underscore that their participation at all levels is key to the operational effectiveness of missions as well as to the success and sustainability of peace processes. We remain committed to increasing the participation of women in uniformed roles, and we want to see the integration of womens needs and gender perspectives into all aspects of peacekeeping. We urge the Secretary General to prioritise the appointment of more women in senior UN leadership positions and to double the numbers of women in military and police contingents of UN peacekeeping operations by 2020. We call on all Member States to increase the number of women as individual police officers as part of specialised teams and formed police units, as well as in leadership positions and professional posts to reach the target of 20 percent launched through the Global Effort initiative in 2009. Member States should also prioritise the nomination of more female correction officers. We further call on all Member States to develop and implement National Action Plans on Women, Peace, and Security, and to increase the number of women officers serving in missions as Staff Officers and Military Observers, and attending UN Staff Office and Military Observer Training Courses. We aim for 15% of such roles being filled by women by December 2017. We also ask Member States to ensure all their training is gender-sensitive and where necessary includes training to advance specific skills of women officers in relation to the role of Military Observer. Every UN peacekeeping mission should have the ability to engage with women as well as men in UN mission areas. We urge the Secretary-General to work with Member States to increase the number of UN women mediators. We support Military Observer Team sites including Mixed Engagement Teams with multiple women officers and mixed Formed Police Units of at least one platoon of women officers. We call for Military and Police Gender Advisers in both Field Mission Headquarters and within each self-sustaining formed unit.
We encourage the Secretary-General to continue to take steps to strengthen the accountability of senior leaders for mainstreaming gender and improving gender balance in their respective missions and departments and welcome the introduction of gender targets as performance indicators in all compacts with senior managers at United Nations headquarters and in the field. We call on all Member States to take substantive measures to increase gender balance in peacekeeping; there are a variety of ways to support this action, including appointing Gender Champions in their national systems, taking steps to increase the number of women in their national militaries, and providing the UN with information on what military roles are open to servicewomen alongside a breakdown of the proportion of male and female officers by rank. These measures should act as a stepping stone to fulfilling the Security Councils request in resolution 2242 to, as a minimum, double the number of women peacekeepers by 2020.
Planning
We call upon the Secretary-General to ensure that mission planning and assessment full