YouSaid · the spoken record

Cliffe

lines on the record: 31
first: 2010-07-16
most recent: 2011-02-11
sittings or episodes: 2
sources: un-security-council

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“No low- income, fragile or conflict-affected country has yet achieved a single Millennium Development Goal. Countries that fall into protracted conflict and fragility lag 20 percentage points behind in poverty reduction. And as recent events have shown, deficits in the institutions that provide security, justice and jobs for citizens can spur conflict not only in the most fragile States, but also in countries that were long viewed as strong and stable. I would like to close by mentioning again the partnership between the United Nations and the World Bank in developing the World Development Report. It has been substantive, thoughtful, non-territorial and focused on a shared peacebuilding agenda, and we very much hope that this will continue in considering the implications for action of the Report.”
2011-02-11 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.6479 (2011) · source
“Last, greater leadership must be provided to regional institutions where they are well positioned to convene both high- and middle-income, non-regional partners. We suggest that the Peacebuilding Commission's unique composition may also give it unexploited potential to facilitate part of that dialogue on timetables for governance transformation. Let me conclude on the urgency of the stakes. The impact of the failure to prevent new and repeated cycles of violence and instability is considerable. Once countries have fallen into a cycle of weak institutions and violence, it is very hard for them to get out. The economic and social impacts are immense. Civil conflict costs 30 years of growth in gross domestic product of the average developing country.”
2011-02-11 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.6479 (2011) · source
“Different countries face different domestic pressures related to the risks and results involved in their international programmes - a problem we call the dual accountability dilemma. It would be presumptuous to claim to have complete answers on this issue, but three starting points can bring approaches closer. First would be to use factual and historical evidence on the speed of governance transformations to inform dialogue. Secondly, one could draw more on South-South exchanges, but also on exchanges between the South and the North that make it explicit that OECD countries are not immune from the problems of corruption and violence and that the challenge of justice and jobs and the grievances they can provoke is a shared challenge.”
2011-02-11 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.6479 (2011) · source
“The fourth track concerns marshalling the combined resources of low-, middle- and high-income countries, I will be a little more frank here than we are in the text of the World Development Report. In our country consultations, there were considerable divisions over approaches among national leaders in fragile situations, middle-income countries and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) donors. Some of those divisions were driven by disagreements over governance models - which norms of responsible leadership apply in fragile situations or situations of risk, particularly in terms of the speed of governance transformation and the models adopted, whether in the context of political reform or corruption.”
2011-02-11 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.6479 (2011) · source
“The first is to support the political convening capacities of regional institutions to address cross- border economic and security issues in concert with the global financial and technical capacities of institutions such as the United Nations and the international financial institutions. Practical examples would include supporting the African Union border programme or the needs for pooled capacity to address drug trafficking in Central America. The second area is tougher action to stem illicit financial flows from trafficking, corruption and money-laundering. This would include action through more joint investigations and prosecutions between developed and developing country jurisdictions.”
2011-02-11 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.6479 (2011) · source
“There is a need to rethink how systems can be made fit for purpose to support rapid confidence-building and institutional transformation, including through faster and less volatile aid, flexible peacekeeping, long-term mediation, and developing budget, staffing and contract systems that acknowledge the reality of insecure environments. The third track for change concerns regional approaches. International approaches are still primarily focused on individual nation-States, and they encounter difficulties in addressing regional challenges such as those in West Africa and Central America. We suggest scaling up action in two areas.”
2011-02-11 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.6479 (2011) · source
“International assistance, whether in development aid or peacekeeping, is often too slow to enter, too quick to exit, and insufficiently able to support national institutional capacity. Our systems and procedures in the international financial institutions - but perhaps it is fair to say that the United Nations and bilateral agencies face some of the same problems - were originally designed for environments that are stable, with strong institutional capacity and competitive markets. These three conditions do not apply in the majority of the most fragile situations.”
2011-02-11 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.6479 (2011) · source
“We also consider the need to move from talking only about coordination to combined operational support - for example, through the World Bank supporting the lead of the United Nations or regional institutions on mediated agreements and security and justice reform; or United Nations departments supporting the security and justice aspects of local economic development initiatives. Here, I would also like to reiterate what the Secretary- General said on the importance of coherence across the multilateral system and the ability, through signals from Member States, to ensure that multilateral agencies themselves have an integrated approach. The second track of change we look at is on internal agency reforms.”
2011-02-11 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.6479 (2011) · source
“As President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf of Liberia said to us in our discussions: "After we have had a civil war, you guys provide us with all the assistance; but when we are trying to prevent it, there is very little that the international community is able to do to help". In order to address this, we look at the potential for greatly expanded initiatives to draw together public- and private-sector investment in generating employment in insecure areas. On police and justice capacity, we note the value of a clear lead role for the United Nations, and the need for flexible capacity that links policing with courts and corrections assistance and can provide a range of advisory, executive and mandated mission functions.”
2011-02-11 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.6479 (2011) · source
“First, with respect to increasing capacity to support citizens' security, justice and employment, we are underinvested in those areas, although they are central to today's risks of violence. It is much harder, for example, for countries to get assistance for their police forces and their courts than for their military forces. It is much harder for them to get assistance for employment generation than for health, education or macroeconomic stability. It is much harder for countries to get assistance when they are struggling to prevent risks from rising than it is after they have had a civil war.”
2011-02-11 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.6479 (2011) · source
“Some lessons here are the importance of early signals on justice and inclusion that signal a break with the past but manage expectations of the timing of change; maintaining a focus on basic functions; making the connections between security and justice reform; pursuing community-based approaches, such as those supported by the United Nations Development Programme, the Department of Political Affairs and the World Bank; establishing back-to-basics job-creation programmes that give marginalized youth respect and status; and involving women in both economic empowerment and the hard areas of security and justice reform. The Report describes the successes of international action, but it also highlights some areas of deficit in linking security and development assistance, and four possible tracks for change.”
2011-02-11 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.6479 (2011) · source
“The institutions of South Africa's transition, for example, while highly effective in those political circumstances, have not always been easily adapted to circumstances in other countries. At the national level, the Report also looks at a number of practical programme tools that have been used to restore confidence and transform institutions.”
2011-02-11 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.6479 (2011) · source
“Experience underlines the importance of early attention to the institutions that provide basic security, justice and employment, and has shown that new initiatives can decrease corruption. Our work confirms previous analysis by the Brahimi Panel, among others, that elections, while often a crucial part of transitions, are not a panacea for broader reform. They must be part of a package of change. Lastly, countries have historically innovated in their institutional approaches rather than copying from abroad. A focus on institutions and governance does not mean convergence on Western institutions. There are many examples demonstrating that the copying of institutions does not work, from colonial legacies to the transplant of models to Iraq. Even South-South copying does not always work smoothly.”
2011-02-11 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.6479 (2011) · source
“Secondly, leaders have built coalitions that are inclusive enough to restore confidence, not necessarily including all political or armed groups, but broad enough to build national support for change and provide a platform for working with local leaders in violence-affected communities. Thirdly, producing some early results has been crucial to restoring confidence. These do not need to be many in number. I would cite, for example, Liberia's programmes to restore basic security and some electricity, and to take action on corruption, or Colombia's redeployment of the military to protect civilian transit on roads. Fourthly, countries have made tough choices over priorities for institutional change.”
2011-02-11 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.6479 (2011) · source
“The World Development Report draws together lessons from national reformers in preventing and recovering from violence. These have provided a number of interesting insights, which I will touch on briefly. First, successful national transformations are the result of multiple transitions, not one-off processes of change. One need only think of the multiple transitions in Ghana, in Chile, in Indonesia or in the Republic of Korea in terms of security, justice, economic policy and political reform. The Report has looked at the historical timelines for institutional and governance transformations. In the twentieth century, no country accomplished this in less than 12 to 15 years, and the average, for the fastest reformers, was between 20 and 30 years.”
2011-02-11 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.6479 (2011) · source
“Those institutional vulnerabilities can then be exacerbated when countries face the stresses of populations with a high percentage of young people, high unemployment, growing inequality, or external events such as the infiltration of foreign fighting forces, trafficking networks or economic shocks. The specific triggers of crises vary by countries' circumstances, but the risks of both political and criminal violence are consistently linked to underlying deficits in the ability of institutions to provide security, justice and jobs. Government capacity obviously matters greatly for violence prevention, but so do accountability and the legitimacy of relations between State and society. Societies with high levels of corruption or human rights abuses, for example, face greater risks of violence in future.”
2011-02-11 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.6479 (2011) · source
“Economic and political grievances often combine, as with the demand for both jobs and justice that we have seen in recent events in the Middle East and North Africa. 5 What are the common elements among the different ways in which security and development links are manifested? New work completed for the World Development Report shows that the risks of violence are highest when institutional weaknesses in societies combine with high levels of internal and external stress. Societies are vulnerable when local institutions are unable to protect their citizens from abuse, either from their own security forces or from non- Government groups, or to provide equitable access to justice and economic opportunities.”
2011-02-11 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.6479 (2011) · source
“However, many of those areas are no longer dominated by classic inter-State threats or civil wars between Governments and well-organized rebel movements, but by much more fluid cycles of social protest and criminal and political violence. As the Secretary-General underlined, organized criminal movements can undermine the gains made by successful peace process, as we see in Central America. Criminal gangs can be mobilized into larger political violence during elections, as we saw in the case of Kenya. Protests over food prices or unemployment can spread into larger political unrest. The cross-border impacts of violence are considerable, from drug trafficking, which has affected even isolated West African countries, to refugee flows and terrorist attacks.”
2011-02-11 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.6479 (2011) · source
“With regard to changing security and development linkages, the Report highlights that there have been many successes in reducing global violence. There has been an enormous reduction in inter-State war. Civil wars, while still exacting an unacceptable toll, directly cause only one quarter of the deaths that they did 20 years ago. Much of that achievement should be credited as a success of the international architecture established after the Second World War - and subsequently adapted - including, of course, centrally, the intergovernmental bodies of the United Nations. Yet 1.5 billion people still live in areas where violence limits their ability to live normally, to go to work and to see their children educated.”
2011-02-11 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.6479 (2011) · source
“The early meetings with the General Assembly, the Economic and Social Council, the Security Council and the Peacebuilding Commission, as well as the input we receive from United Nations departments, funds and programmes, have been crucial in shaping the analysis of the World Development Report. The main message of the Report is that strengthening the national institutions and governance that provide citizen security, justice and jobs are crucial to avoiding repeated cycles of violence and instability. I will touch on four issues connected to that, namely, the ways in which security and development linkages are changing, national lessons, possible directions for international policy and the urgency of the stakes.”
2011-02-11 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.6479 (2011) · source
“Ms. Cliffe: I would like to thank the Government of Brazil for the opportunity to participate in this meeting and for the work of Ambassador Viotti in consistently drawing attention to security and development linkages in the discussions of the Peacebuilding Commission (PBC) on Guinea-Bissau. I would also like to express my gratitude for the contribution of General dos Santos Cruz in the Advisory Council of the World Development Report, along with that of President Kagame, Minister Amado and the many other leaders of the Member States represented here. I want to say at the outset that, as His Excellency Mr. Gasana emphasized, we View this very much as a joint process with the United Nations.”
2011-02-11 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.6479 (2011) · source
“Another question that we have here, as we finalize our own process, is whether we should be looking at more structural prevention at a multi-country or regional level, which includes supporting initiatives such as the African Union's border programme to bring stability and development instruments into those most fragile areas. I will conclude here, and I thank you very much, Mr. President, for the opportunity to contribute to this debate.”
2010-07-16 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.6360 (2010) · source
“I think there are also questions about whether there is potential to link up the more specialized, technical areas of the economic area agencies over issues such as natural resources management or wealth-sharing, which can be important issues in this kind of situation. Lastly, I would like to underline - as the Minister and the Deputy Secretary-General also said - that prevention is not an issue only for individual nation-States. We have done quite a lot of new research on the way in which violence is clustering along insecure border areas and how violent movements are mobile in areas like Central Africa or the Sahel. It is very difficult for any single nation-State to take the actions, even with international support, that would be successful in truly resolving this sort of problem in the long term.”
2010-07-16 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.6360 (2010) · source
“The third question is whether we should look at more financial support for Governments working towards peaceful, preventative transitions. That is exactly the question of countries that are currently in the situation of Guinea or Niger, for example. Fourth, is there an opportunity for a new partnership between the United Nations, the African Union and other regional organizations and the more developmental or economic institutions such as the international financial institutions? I think the question to ask ourselves here is whether there is more that we could do to try to provide the kind of economic development activities that can help stabilize countries entering a fragile, preventative transition.”
2010-07-16 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.6360 (2010) · source
“Countries take, on average, 14 years to recover from civil wars to anything like their earlier stage. Mediation efforts tend to cost in the hundreds of thousands of dollars - a much, much lower cost. The second question is whether we should look at longer periods of facilitation after peace agreements. That was raised to us in our consultations. It is not within the area that the World Bank supports, but it was raised as a general point about the international architecture, that mediators tend to leave immediately after peace agreements are signed. In fact, countries face predictable risks for longer periods after that, often with very much less international facilitation. I think in that sense the peacebuilding architecture and the efforts made under the Peacebuilding Commission and the Peacebuilding Fund are also important.”
2010-07-16 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.6360 (2010) · source
“In one of our recent consultation meetings, President Johnson-Sirleaf - who is on the Advisory Council for the World Development report - underlined that, as she put it, "You guys give everything to us after we have had a civil war, but nothing to us when we are trying to prevent a civil war." So that contrast will be one of the issues that we underline. I thought I would conclude by raising some practical points or questions that are very much still in our minds as we go into the last third of this process that we have been conducting. The first is the question raised as to whether we should provide more support for mediation. Certainly - as both the Deputy Secretary-General and the Minister raised - the cost of a civil war that actually breaks out is, as we know, enormous; it runs into the tens of billions of dollars, on average.”
2010-07-16 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.6360 (2010) · source
“If we look at West Africa, for example, we have committed large amounts of funds - again, collectively as donors - to Liberia, Sierra Leone or Cote d'Ivoire. But when we come to the transition arrangements that the African Union, the Economic Community of West African States and the United Nations have helped to facilitate in Guinea or Niger, we find that far fewer funds are available to help those Governments and those societies try to consolidate attempts to prevent escalation of conflict. We term those transitions "preventative transitions".”
2010-07-16 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.6360 (2010) · source
“Of course this debate focuses on Africa, but I think we see some of the same trends starting to occur in other regions. For all these reasons, prevention - even in situations where a successful post-conflict initial settlement has been achieved - is a very key challenge. New research that we have conducted for the WDR indicates that the common element in those risks of recurring violence is weak national institutions, whether they be in the political, security or developmental areas. Secondly, there is the challenge of preventing an escalation of violence in countries that have not previously had large-scale civil conflict. Here, the international donor community at present provides much less assistance to countries seeking to prevent violence than we do collectively to countries that have already had civil war.”
2010-07-16 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.6360 (2010) · source
“From the late 1990s onward, that picture changes quite a lot. Now, one third of battle deaths globally are taking place in countries that have political settlements or peace settlements in place, including some of the countries that the Honourable Minister referred to, such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Sudan. Then there are high levels of crime and violence occurring after post-conflict settlements. For example, there is the situation in the Central American countries, where Guatemala or El Salvador achieved very successful peace settlements but now face rates of crime and violence that are causing more deaths than occurred during their civil wars. That issue has been of particular concern in Latin America.”
2010-07-16 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.6360 (2010) · source
“Prevention is one of our central messages for two particular reasons. First, countries that we consider to be post- conflict are experiencing more renewed insecurity that before, so the dividing line that we perhaps have between the idea of post-conflict and the idea of prevention situations is much less clear than we previously thought. That ranges from renewed civil war - by this decade over 90 per cent of new civil wars have occurred in countries that had already had civil wars - through fighting after political agreements. Up until the late 19905, for example, peace settlements roughly did the job that we expect them to do, in that they prevented fighting after the settlement. Less than five per cent of global battle deaths in that period occurred in countries with peace settlements in place.”
2010-07-16 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.6360 (2010) · source
“Ms. Cliffe: I am delighted and honoured to be here. I thank the Nigerian presidency for having asked us to participate in this meeting. As many members of the Council will know, the World Development Report on Conflict, Security and Development has been developed in very close cooperation with the United Nations. We have had the benefit of expert input papers from the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, the Department of Political Affairs, the United Nations Development Programme, the World Food Programme and other funds and programmes, and the benefits of an exchange just last month with the General Assembly on some of the preliminary conclusions of the Report. I am particularly delighted that the subject of this debate is prevention, since this is likely to be one of the key messages of the World Development Report (WDR).”
2010-07-16 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.6360 (2010) · source