Think Change
Think Change
The Summit of the Future: How can we build peaceful societies in a fragmented world?
As conflicts continue to spiral in many parts of the world, from those who dominate the headlines daily to the ones that we barely hear about, global instability is increasing in the context of rising food insecurity, forced displacement, and climate change. We need to step up our collective commitment to building peaceful societies.
In September 2024, the United Nations hosted the Summit of the Future, bringing together world leaders to create a new international consensus on how to address global challenges and create a better future, with the aim to settle conflicts peacefully and expand youth participation in global decision-making, amongst others.
This episode discusses how we can prevent conflict and rebuild solidarity and accountability in a fragmented world. What are the challenges and how can we mitigate against them? How can we involve marginalised groups to build an inclusive global architecture that serves those on the ground working on peacebuilding initiatives?
Disclaimer: This episode was recorded in advance of the Summit.
Guests
- Sara Pantuliano (host), Chief Executive, ODI
- Elizabeth Spehar, Elizabeth Mary Spear, Assistant Secretary-General for Peacebuilding Support, UN Department of Political Affairs
- Joyce Mendez, United Nations Secretary General's Youth Advisory Group
- Jago Salmon, Senior Research Associate, Politics and Governance
Resources:
https://www.un.org/peacebuilding/content/2025-review-un-peacebuilding-architecture (Peacebuilding Architecture Review, UN)
https://www.un.org/en/summit-of-the-future (Summit of the Future, UN)
https://odi.org/en/insights/a-pact-for-the-future-needs-a-stronger-awareness-of-un-financing-in-the-present/ (Blog, ODI)
https://odi.org/en/insights/event-recap-community-engagement-armed-actors/ (Event, ODI)
https://odi.org/en/publications/meeting-report-security-and-climate-change-implications-for-hdp-programmes-in-somalia/ (Meeting Report, ODI)
https://odi.org/en/publications/community-engagement-protection-and-peacebuilding-reviewing-evidence-and-practice/ (Journal article, ODI)
https://odi.org/en/insights/physician-heal-thyself-a-new-agenda-for-peace-must-look-inwards-first-to-address-institutional-obstacles-to-building-and-preventing-peace/ (Expert Comment, ODI)
Sara Pantuliano
00:09
Welcome to Think Change. I'm Sara Pantuliano. Conflicts continue to spiral in many parts of the world, from those who dominate the headlines daily to the ones that we barely hear about. Global instability and violence are increasing in the context of worsening poverty, of food security, of growing forced displacement and, over the past few months, we've seen a devastating deterioration of peace in the world. As conflicts and violence increase, we need to step up our collective commitment to building peaceful societies. We must redouble public efforts to build a constituency for peace that recognises the value of investing in prevention and in mitigating conflict. How can we rebuild trust? How can we rebuild solidarity and accountability in such a fragmented world, while we know the young voices are vital, but young people are too often excluded from peace-building processes. The recent UN summit for the future has offered an opportunity to harness the creativity and the innovation of young people, but will it deliver on its promise as member states set out to implement the pact? Join me on this episode of Think Change. I'm so pleased to welcome Elizabeth Spehar, Assistant Secretary General for Peace-Building Support. Joyce Mendez, United Nations Secretary General's Youth Climate Advisor, and Jago Salmon, Senior Research Associate at ODI.
01:35
Elizabeth, let me start with you. I've had the privilege of working closely with you as the Chair of the Advisory Group to the Peacebuilding Fund and we've had you on the podcast a couple of years ago actually, when pretty much at the beginning of Think Change. You've been one of our first ever guests. Last time you joined us on Think Change, geopolitics was changing in a way we had not seen since the Cold War. Russia had just invaded Ukraine, the world was recovering from the shock of the COVID pandemic and global economic ties were shifting. You talked about global security and peace-building efforts being under pressure from climate change and the weaponising of new technologies. Where are we now? Can you set the scene for us?
Elizabeth Spehar
02:21
Well, thank you very much, Sara. It's a real pleasure to be back here at Think Change, always wonderful to talk to you and to be joined by two other extremely stimulating colleagues, Joyce and Jago. Indeed, the last time we spoke about these issues was about two years ago, and I wish I could report a brighter scenario. But I would have to say that, unfortunately, we're much in the same situation as we were a couple of years ago and, in some respects, even worse. I think humanity, in many respects, is at a crossroads. We see that we're facing an unprecedented array of threats. The landscape out there is defined by intensifying geopolitical tensions. We have shifting alliances among member states and escalating regional conflicts. The war in Ukraine, which we commented on last time, sadly continues with horrendous consequences, with no perceivable end in sight. But also, since we last spoke, we also have the reignition of the murderous conflict in Gaza, with the real threat of a regional spillover. In fact, what we're facing right now is a decades-long high in the number of conflicts around the world, and these conflicts represent the number one driver of humanitarian needs. I can tell you that by the end of 2023, the UN estimated that 363 million people needed humanitarian assistance. Now, that represents a 33% increase from 2022.
04:02
Every day, what we are seeing as UN is that so many people are facing unimaginable suffering, and violent conflict is one of those major contributors. It's disrupting lives, causing loss of life and it's forcing populations to move. But when we talk about the consequences of violent conflict, I think we also need to realise that, beyond the very tragic cost in lives, it also has a huge economic cost. And according to the latest Global Peace Index, for example, last year in 2023, they estimated that violence cost the world nearly $20 trillion US dollars, or $2,380 per person. So continuing to tolerate this violence makes no human sense in terms of our humanity, but it also does not make any economic sense.
05:03
Now, something else I wanted to underscore in terms of what we're facing. We've seen that one of the predicators of wider violence in any society and spilling into conflict is the way that a society treats women, and something that we have noted at the UN is that there has been, in the last couple of years, a serious backlash against women's rights in a number of countries. This is something that I can tell you the Secretary-General and all of us are extremely concerned about, and we're trying to look at an acceleration scenario in terms of how we can accelerate progress on gender equality and women's rights. I also have to say, in terms of the current scenario, is that investments in peace and conflict prevention is steadily decreasing, and now it only represents a small portion of all official development assistance. We can contrast that, and we should contrast that, with world military expenditure, and that has increased for the ninth consecutive year in 2023 and reached last year a total of $2,443 billion.
06:15
Another thing I would mention in terms of the current landscape, which we also discussed two years ago, is the geopolitical divisions and the erosion of trust which you also alluded to, Sara, and this sadly continues, and this backdrop is hampering our efforts to act collectively.
06:37
So it's a bit of a dire scenario, but I do want to say that I think there are some positives, and we are seeing, for example, countries like Liberia, the Gambia, Colombia, who were mired in civil war, in conflict, just a few short decades ago or even more recent than that, and they have progressed on their journey towards building and consolidating peace.
07:06
Of course, there are still problems, but they are largely staying the course, so what that is telling us is that investing in peace and development can work and that the situation does not have to remain the way it is. Another positive, I think, is that countries are more attuned now to new and emerging drivers of conflict and conflict stressors or multipliers, and they're ready to try and address them. One of the areas is the impact of the adverse effects of climate change on peace and security. It's still a somewhat controversial concept, but it is now being more and more looked at as something that needs to be addressed. And then, finally, despite the polarization and the ongoing conflicts, I do see and if you look at the preparations for the Summit of the Future and the draft of the Pact for the Future here at the UN, member states realise that, precisely because things are so dire, we have to recommit to multilateralism, we have to recommit to international law, and we have to find a way out of these conflicts by working collectively.
Sara Pantuliano
08:15
But thanks for painting such a clear if dismal picture of where we are, Elizabeth, and thanks for actually also emphasising where we can see the positives, because just watching the news on TV sometimes, we probably are right to despair. One thing in all the work we've done together in the past couple of years has been very clear to me is really the importance of emphasising how we can prevent conflicts. You know, the importance of prevention actually is so difficult, is challenging is, you know, is a concept that sometimes gets misunderstood, and yet the global architecture for peace and security is grounded in this universal commitment to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war. So it really is around prevention. Jago, you called the landmark UN World Bank's Pathway for Peace Inclusive Approaches for Preventing Violent Conflicts report, which really reiterated the need for global action that is focused on prevention. What is the best way to prevent societies from descending into conflict and crisis?
Jago Salmon
09:30
Thanks Sara, thanks Elizabeth, for a very clear picture. There are many things to pick up in what was said. If you allow me, I'll paint a bit of a picture from a different field. So in 1900, the annual mortality rate was 1 in 42 in the US. In 1998, that had dropped to 1 in 25. These annual mortality rates in the 1900s were pretty static. People understood life was shorter, it was seen as inevitable that people would die younger.
10:09
Now, in the 20th century, those mortality rates were brought down dramatically and the point I want to make here that's relevant to conflict is politicians like hospitals and ER wards and emergency medical intervention. But actually, a huge amount of what brought down mortality rates was better nutrition, higher incomes, smoking cessation. Definitely post-Second World War vaccines helped, but actually the overall improvement was public health. What has really strained this system since the 1990s has been the steady escalation of conflicts within countries, and I think what we have been trying to do, with full confidence and recognition of the huge amount of work that was put into this by diplomats, aid workers, humanitarian workers and everyday people, was that we still, in many ways, have been using an emergency response.
11:17
We've been using ER to stop conflicts from preventing and if you've been to unfortunately, I have to say a US emergency care ward, you have a lot of people who, in many ways, shouldn't be in emergency care. I think we've begun the process. I think the establishment of the Peacebuilding Fund and the architecture in 2005, began that process. I think the introduction, for the first time in history, of a Sustainable Development Goal dedicated to peace in 2015 and 2016. We began to actually seriously commit to prevention, which is not something that we do in an emergency, not something that we do when violence has already broken out, but actually is a huge part of just everyday development, everyday work.
12:07
If I could make an example from the UK, I think more and more countries are waking up after the riots in the UK that happened, unfortunately, recently. I think there's growing awareness in many countries that actually managing inequalities, managing marginalisation, giving people access to opportunity, ensuring that security provision is not biased, is not harming people are the key ways that Pathways pointed to. Putting it simply, Pathways sort of came up with two, three key messages. When you say them, they aren't radical, but let's be clear: One, growth alone is not sufficient to keep a society together, and yet a lot of what we've done is supercharged growth, as if it was to solve all problems. Secondly, security forces don't solve all problems. Countries that have sustained peace over a long period of time in many ways have made a very difficult decision at some point that they can't simply police their way or military their way out of a problem, out of grievances. Grievances remain. And the third one is reform, is opening up a dialogue, developing a vision for a population, for a country that has institutional reform, that brings in other parts of society, provides social services, addresses marginalisation. I think these are the recipes that we have. That costs money and that costs, for many countries, it requires international support.
13:50
Just to sort of wrap off that question, the international architecture, the emergency response architecture, is under huge strain at the moment and I think the Summit for the Future has given us an opportunity to really recommit to that. And there is, I agree with Elizabeth, my impression is there is actually a huge demand for the revitalisation of effective multilateralism. But, as you said, Sara, as you said Elizabeth, the problems that many countries are facing are changing and I think the next decade is really an opportunity to revitalise a peace-building approach to conflict, working with countries, in partnership with local actors, to help solve problems that they are dealing with in their countries, rather than just waiting for an escalation to a problem that requires an international intervention. And the word intervention, I think, is there.
14:47
You mentioned the peacebuilding architecture. I want to make sure that our listeners know what we're talking about. The UN member states will soon embark upon a new process to review this UN peacebuilding architecture. It gets revisited every five years and is really the aim to set out a better pathway to building and sustaining peace. Elizabeth, what is the peacebuilding architecture review? Can you explain to our listeners what the peacebuilding architecture is, what the review is set out to do and what are the expectations for this review? What would a good outcome be like?
Elizabeth Spehar
15:25
Yes, I mean. I think this bears a little bit of explanation, because those of us sitting in the UN are quite aware of the fact that sometimes we talk in a rather cryptic fashion and we're in a bit of a UN bubble that doesn't always translate to the rest of the world. So just quite simply, the United Nations member states decided to embark on creating a set of instruments for peace-building back in 2005: The UN Peacebuilding Architecture is an intergovernmental peacebuilding commission which has various roles, one of which is playing an advisory role to the General Assembly, ECOSOC, and also to the Security Council. The Peacebuilding Fund, which supports, through funding, peacebuilding actions, and the Peacebuilding Support Office, which I head, which tries to articulate, if you will, and support a coherent approach to peacebuilding in the UN. The peacebuilding architecture goes much beyond those three official entities. It's really the UN system as a whole.
16:27
The fact that the Peacebuilding Architecture Review happens the next year, the following year, is very important because there is a lot on peace and security, on prevention and peacebuilding, that member states are committing to in the Pact for the Future that will need to be operationalised, that will need to be made effective to be operationalised.
16:52
There is an informal consultation process that has been ongoing all of this year. You, Sara, and Joyce, are members of a small, independent, eminent persons group that has been tasked by the Secretary General to feed ideas to member states as well, and to him, on how we can leverage this peacebuilding architecture review, and I would again return to the informal consultations this year as a time for NGOs, think tanks, regional organisations, anyone who's interested in weighing in on what this review of our peacebuilding tools at the UN can do and ideas for improving it. Please hold a talk, have a meeting and send us the information. We have a website where the summaries of informal consultations are being collated as input for the review, and you would be doing us all a very good service.
Sara Pantuliano
17:48
Thanks, Elizabeth, and the link to the website is in the show notes. We really want to encourage everyone to contribute. As you say, it's a process that will benefit from the strength, the passion, the energy, the knowledge, the insights of the wider peacebuilding community. And so, you know, both for me, Joyce, and the rest of the independent eminent persons to be able to formulate adequate recommendations to the Secretary General and to the process, and, of course, for everyone and the member states that are involved in the process, it's been very important to receive, you know, these contributions from the peacebuilding community. But, Joyce, let me come to you, because you bring a particular important, you know dimension and perspective to what the review is aiming to do.
18:35
You are a youth climate activist. You focus on the nexus of water, food and energy justice. I've heard you say that working with young people means investing in the present and the opportunity for real change in this civilisation paradigm. What can we do to better empower young people to make a real difference, not just in their communities, where we know that they already do that, but really also to global peace-building? How can the review process really take this into account?
Joyce Mendez
19:07
Thank you, Sara, for your question. Thank you for having me here.
19:10
I'm learning a lot and I was reflecting before on what the conversations we've been having, especially that local knowledge that we develop in a certain community and group, can support and can help, you know, this building process.
19:26
And the question is now also at the international level. I see several of my colleagues as well taking taking leads, in positions in international frameworks and organisation as well that work with building processes, and I think that one of the aspects will be ensuring youth participation, like meaningful participation as well, not as a checklist - like, oh yeah, we have a young person, they're nice - and perhaps as well preventing youth tokenism, for example, in a consultation. Are we just listening for real to the person, how are we including their inputs, and I think, that's something that we are also advocating a lot for youth, from youth and to youth right to create those spaces as well, safe spaces but that have a meaningful kind of action and way on how we can kind of increase our climate activism to an international level. I hope I answered your question, because it's quite a complex question.
Sara Pantuliano
20:25
I think it's I mean, you said this so clearly, you know, avoiding this tokenisation of youth, because that is often what happens.
20:34
So the young people are invited, but then member states in particular don't necessarily give the right weight to what young people are saying, and we're seeing how important, actually, the voices, the actions of young people are in really demanding a fairer, more just world, be that on the climate side or on the peace side. So I think it's really important, as I was saying at the beginning, to harness the youth energy to really try and build a fairer, more just, more peaceful world. One important issue that we will need to tackle in the review is really how to increase financing for peacebuilding. We've seen in some of the meetings we've already had, we know the resources for peacebuilding are incommensurate to address the current challenges. That was an issue that was also at the heart of the Pathway for Peace report that we mentioned earlier with Jago, and particularly, in that report, there was a discussion around the role the international financial institutions, IFIs that you already referred to, should play in financing peace-building. Jago I come to you. What should the review advocate for, particularly vis-à-vis the role of the IFIs?
Jago Salmon
21:51
I always find it a bit surprising that it is a bubble, the UN, but there are some things that I find that people aren't aware enough of. Women, peace and security and the youth peace and security agendas didn't come top down, from the Security Council down to field operations. It was the active voices of young people and women who had experienced and lived through and suffered through conflict that got these agendas picked up and then legislated by the Council. They said this is our experience, this is our life, and if we go back to Elizabeth's point, we know that countries that include women across peace negotiations, recovery efforts, reconstruction remain more stable. I highly recommend everybody go back to look at the 2018 report on the missing piece, which was written on the basis of young people's voices.
22:51
But anyway, that wasn't your question. Your question was around the money, but I really wanted to second what Joyce was saying. Money, ok, just stark numbers. So Elizabeth mentioned the CIPRI report on military expenditure - $2,443 billion last year, highest levels of military expenditure. At the same time, we now have sort of reconstruction costs of $486 billion for Ukraine, is the estimate. I think it's $15 billion for Syria, $485 million for Gaza, and these are just numbers. But 0.1% tax, a levy of 0.1% on military expenditure, would give us $24 billion a year to invest in peace.
23:42
So the IFIs have already made, I think, there has been a seismic change to this broader ecosystem, this networked multilateralism that the SG, the Secretary General, refers to. In 2020, the World Bank released its Fragility, Conflict and Violence strategy, its first one ever. We've seen the AFDB, the African Development Bank, continue to invest in that. The Asian Development Bank has released a Fragility, Conflict and Violence strategy. This led, for example, in the bank, in IDA 19, in 2019, to allocate, I believe, $11 billion to fragile states.
24:20
The most important thing that we have to get from this review is there cannot be a retreat from these agendas, and I think it's important that the financial institutions keep their focus, and the reason I say this is because it's the shareholders that keep the bank focused on these things. But, just like Elizabeth was saying, I don't think this is about having one fund inside the bank or one unit inside the bank who's tasked with solving all of this. It's really about getting our education sectors; getting the education programming globally, of which the bank has a huge investment; health sectors; the investments in countries to be more conflict sensitive.
25:06
The third point and, then I'll go to put something very specific, is this localisation agenda. The reality is a world in which most conflicts are up middle-income country and in which countries are growing so rapidly. The idea that decisions are all made in DC or London or Paris or New York, I think, is changing rapidly. We need to make sure that more of these funds are in the hands of frontline peace builders, people working in the classrooms, working on the streets.
Sara Pantualiano
25:42
I want to go back to something you said, Jago, about how the Youth Peace and Security Agenda, the Women Peace and Security Agenda, really came from the pressure of the lived experience of young people, of women. And actually, the new agenda for peace, did recognise, you know this, has recognised this pressure, this involvement. It recognises that young people can play a very positive role in preventing and resolving conflict and in building peace. And he has placed young people, especially women and youth, at the forefront of peace processes, which I actually found very energising. Joyce, how can we make sure that this aspiration that has been encapsulated really well in the new Agenda for Peace is actually operationalised in the review?
Joyce Mendez
26:33
First of all, it's an amazing guidance, right, we also need this guidance on how to operate as well. And in the other way, I also see that there's a huge gap in the way the communities that are in risk,and especially groups like children, youth, it has to be a full financial inclusion on them, kind of in the architecture as well as the framework. And how to do it, I think that's kind of a specific question because sometimes we see, especially kind of at country levels, like certain funding gets there, but also how we reach vulnerable communities close to that funding. And I think the way how it's going to be is providing guidance, being a tool as well, and also providing this perspective of good practices. Right, I'm speaking kind of as a practitioner, as a community leader, sometimes kind of, see how those good practices work in other regions, and I think it's going to be a huge like communication effort on how to translate as well the messages and how to make people understand a little bit and also kind of recap and listen, because I think that will be translated into national policies, public policies, and that's the idea that we want to ensure with the Summit of the Future.
Sara Pantualiano
27:53
Absolutely. Well. We're very much at time, but can I ask you, in literally 30 seconds, no more, what are your hopes for the peacebuilding agenda? What do you hope that we can achieve in the coming months and years? Who wants to start?
Elizabeth Spehar
28:27
One of the main things is really that all of this goodwill around prevention and peacebuilding, which we see and it's almost a rhetorical reflection right now on the part of many that it's actually translated into action. If you look at the resolutions that established the 2025 Peacebuilding Architecture Review, it asks for specific work and ideas on implementation and impact. In other words, it's not just about more resolutions or having the Peacebuilding Commission have nice chats once in a while. It's what is the work on peacebuilding going to do in terms of changing people's lives on the ground? Changing people's lives on the ground, improvements in terms of more resources, better mechanisms, more inclusion of the type that Joyce was talking about, which is not just token inclusion, but what are we doing to actually bring women, youth and other excluded groups directly into decision making? And we have to get to the quantum leap of resources that the SGO was talking about. Too much money for military, too little for peace. Thank you.
Jago Salmon
29:19
I completely agree with everything Elizabeth said. Let's put our money where our mouth is a little bit and start from 50 million and keep climbing, and that leads diplomatic leadership. It needs coalitions in countries, it needs the voices of young people and women, and I believe that we can get. I think the world wants a more ambitious response to peace, so that's my hope.
Joyce Mendez
29:46
Yeah, well, besides that, we have these new challenges and we want to see a review that keeps understanding these new challenges we're having, and especially in aspects as well as environmental peace building. When we think also and we act in peace building, we're also not just thinking in now, as we were talking, but also investing again in the future. Imagine ourselves as being ancestors. So, so perhaps also the question to you and people who are listening to us is how you want to be a good ancestor, like in your life, in your context, how are you going to help us as well with the peace-building processes? Translate this, but how are you going to be a good ancestor in building peace-building? Perhaps I'm the one that wants to leave a question for you.
Sara Pantuliano
30:35
Thank you, Joyce. This is a really strong point to end on. In a world that is dominated by an increasing number of conflicts and by growing militarisation, our peacebuilding efforts will only succeed if we all play our role. We need to get together at all levels, proactively and preventatively. We need to have the right institutional structure in place to ensure the local actors and communities have a solid foundation to work from, and especially so our youth and women, as you've said so well. Leaders must ensure that they involve their communities in the planning, they involve them in the actual work and they involve them through continuous feedback.
31:16
A security apparatus on its own does not create peace, and neither does economic growth. Well, the 2025 UN Peacebuilding Architecture Review will be a really important opportunity to take stock of existing peacebuilding efforts, of their impact on the ground, and we will, as ODI, also take part in the review. As always, resources on this topic are available in the show notes. Elizabeth, Joyce and Jago, thank you so much for joining me for this important conversation and, to our listeners, thank you for being here. If you have any feedback, please let us know and, of course, please do subscribe if you haven't already. Until next time.
