Ashraf Abo Arafe
Mr. Jean Pierre Lacroix, Under-Secretary General for Peacekeeping Operations,
Major General Staff / Waheed Ezzat Assistant Minister of Defense for Operations, Special Forces, and Borders Guard,
Major General/ Alaa Abd-Elmoaty, Secretary General of International Cooperation Committee, Ministry of Interior,
Senior representatives and Assistants to the Secretary-General of the United Nations,
Distinguished representatives of sisterly African and Arab countries
Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,
Welcome to Cairo and to the Regional Conference on Enhancing the Performance of Peacekeeping Operations: from Mandate to Exit.
In over seventy years, the United Nations peacekeeping operations achieved remarkable success in maintaining peace, preventing conflicts, and protecting civilians. The tasks of these operations have evolved over the past decades and so have the expectations of the international community. Peacekeeping now faces unprecedented challenges to deliver complex tasks in unconventional operational environments, while receiving fewer resources for their mandates implementation.
In pursuit for a more effective peacekeeping, a number of major reviews, including the HIPPO and the Group of Experts reports on peace operations and sustaining peace, brought forward a series of commendable analyses and recommendations. Against this background, the reforms initiated by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, including reform of the peace and security pillar of the UN Secretariat, the Action for Peacekeeping initiative and its accompanying Declaration of Shared Commitments on Peacekeeping Operations, are timely and necessary. The intergovernmental consensus generated around these initiatives affirms the commitment of Member States to own these reforms and to advance them in practice. This conference represents a practical demonstration of this commitment.
Excellencies,
In 1960 Egypt made its first military contribution to the United Nations Peacekeeping Operation in the Congo. Since then, our police and military personnel in blue helmets upheld peacekeeping principles, and sacrificed their lives for the cause of peace.
Through the years, Egypt maintained its posture as a top troop and police contributing country, and currently ranks the 7th largest contributor of uniformed personnel to UN peacekeeping. We also take pride in our role in advancing the development of peacekeeping doctrine through the UN General Assembly, the development and review of peacekeeping mandates, by proposing guidelines on the contribution of peacekeeping to peacebuilding and sustaining peace during our most recent membership on the Security Council, and our continuing commitment to advancing the partnership between the United Nations and the African Union in support of peacekeeping efforts on our Continent.
In light of this experience, both as a major troop and police contributing country and as a recent non-permanent member of the UN Security Council, I wish to highlight two points:
First: We need to approach the future of peacekeeping by reiterating our firm commitment to enhancing the effectiveness of the United Nations in addressing conflict at all stages from prevention to settlement to post-conflict peacebuilding and context-specific continuum of response, utilizing the range of tools available for the United Nations to maintain international peace and security.
In this connection, we firmly believe that the primacy of politics should be the hallmark of the approach of the United Nations to the resolution of conflict. We need to weigh the full range of responses, when addressing a situation which may endanger international peace and security, and to deploy UN peacekeeping operations only as an accompaniment, not as an alternative, to a political strategy that addresses the root causes of conflict.
Second: The Declaration of Shared Commitments, endorsed so far by 150 Member States, reflects our common resolve to enhance the overall performance of peacekeeping operations: from designing mandates to their review, from configuring mission structures to their deployment, and in preparing for their exit. There is a need to take forward these commitments to the next level of practical implementation. We should aim for an operational framework that encourages greater complementarity and coherence in the implementation by all actors addressed by the commitments. We certainly need to avoid a siloed approach to implementation that will render all efforts incomplete and ineffective.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is in this context that our conference assumes particular relevance. It is the first regional consultations with African and Arab stakeholders, troop and police contributing countries, host states to UN peacekeeping operations, the majority of which are in Africa and the Arab world, the African Union Commission, and regional economic communities, aiming at forging greater understanding of and partnership for tackling the question of enhancing peacekeeping performance.
This conference provides a unique platform for these African and Arab stakeholders to contribute to the development of a comprehensive and integrated performance policy framework that identifies clear standards of peacekeeping performance from mandate to exit.
The voice of Africa, as the primary stakeholder in the peacekeeping enterprise, must be heard and heeded. In its capacity as the incoming Chair of the African Union in 2019, Egypt believes in deeper and more strategic partnership between the African Union and the United Nations, and working with other global partners, more notably in the area of peace and security.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
As evident from its title, this conference seeks to approach UN peacekeeping reform through a comprehensive view that encompasses the various factors affecting their performance. Our conference assumes further importance in light of the upcoming discussions on peacekeeping reform, most notably in the context of the planned defense ministerial conference scheduled for March 2019.
Before I conclude, I would like to express the appreciation of the Government of Egypt for the generous support received from our partners, most notably the Governments of Japan, Norway, and Canada, as well as from the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and UN Women.
I also wish to acknowledge the outstanding effort made by the Cairo International Centre for Conflict Resolution, Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding in the organization of this conference. The CCCPA has evolved into an internationally recognized center of excellence on peace and security matters, an achievement that deserves praise and recognition. We consider the Centre a great asset and a valuable instrument for forging and deepening partnerships with African entities and institutions, as well as with the United Nations and other key international partners.
I thank all of you for being part of this important event and I wish you fruitful deliberations.
to all.. 
