Ambassadorial-level PBC meeting on national efforts for prevention and peacebuilding

Check Against Delivery

Mr. Chair, Excellencies,

We need to get together, share our experiences and make partnerships. We need to make it normal to talk about what we do in our own countries. I congratulate Kenya, Norway and Timor Leste for leading by example, and we should all be inspired to do the same.

In regard to Kenya’s review of its national peacebuilding architecture, I want to note that it takes impressive political and institutional leadership to use a cross-sectoral and cross-institutional approach that engages multiple stakeholders. I hope you will come back and update us when your “New National Agenda for Peace” has been put in place and you have tested it, to tell us what you have learned.

It is always inspiring to learn from our neighbor Norway. It is an impressive whole-of-society approach to countering violent extremism and terrorism. And our authorities are continuously in contact.

And it is fascinating to hear about Timor-Leste’s approach to transitioning out of conflict and creating new spaces for dialogue and reconciliation, allowing for processes of memorialization to be consultative and inclusive.

Let me humbly share one sectoral example from my own country, Denmark.

In Denmark, we apply a multifaceted approach to the early prevention of violent extremism at national, local and civil society levels.

An important feature of our approach is the promotion of what we call “info houses”, which are local crime prevention networks spread out across our municipalities and police districts. These serve as flexible platforms for preventing and countering cases of violent extremism through continuous information sharing and collaboration between all actors including authorities at all levels, including schools, social services, police and prisons. It is a model that has been a source of inspiration for other countries’ prevention work.

Excellencies,

The experiences shared at today’s meeting highlight what we know so well: Peacebuilding is work in progress. We are all in the process of working to continuously improve our societies. The universality of conflict prevention must be reflected in the Pact for the Future and the 2025 Review of the Peacebuilding Architecture.

Each experience shared today made concrete and tangible what was done, how and by who. This highlights so well the value of this Commission as an excellent place to share experiences and learn from one another in order to improve conflict prevention across our different – yet also remarkably similar – countries.

Thank you.