India suggests UN to divert peacekeeping bud to peace-building

India has criticised the "lip service" by nations to address challenges of peacekeeping operations and suggested to increase allocation of funds to activities related to peacebuilding in conflict situations.
"It has been acknowledged for a long time now that the flagship activity of UN - its peacekeeping operations - is facing severe challenges and is not able to achieve the desired results that of bringing sustaining peace to the areas of its deployment," India's Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN Ambassador Tanmaya Lal said.
Speaking at a Security Council debate on UN Peacekeeping Operations on August 29, he said the UN agencies that have a major role in implementing the sustaining peace agenda are outside the Security Council, but have little funding support.

He pointed out that less than even one per cent of the funds allocated to peacekeeping are available for peacebuilding efforts.
"While the normative acknowledgement of the challenges and possible solutions exist - there appears to be only a lip service to match the same with required resources," Lal said.
He also voiced concern over the "obvious lack" of appropriate investment into the political dialogue and a huge mismatch between resource allocation for peacekeeping and peace building.

Lal suggested that UN member states may consider allocation of an appropriate percentage of funds from the peacekeeping budget to activities related to peacebuilding and sustaining peace.

He said this could be an "option to move forward to achieve sustaining peace in the various intra-state conflicts we are facing. This is in the context of the pressure on the already meager resources available for the United Nations development system."
He noted that the current peacekeeping mandates include some elements to restore and rebuild the legitimacy of the state authority in order to prevent the relapse of the conflict and lay the foundations for achieving sustaining peace.
"However, the challenges in this process include a lack of genuine effort to understand the priorities of the host state and properly incorporate the same into the mandate; and a huge difference between ambitions and capacities and resources," he added.

Emphasizing that there is a broad and clear agreement on the need for reform, he said India appreciates the focus of the Secretary-General on a greater collaboration across the three pillars of the UN work so that resources can be reoriented to build capacity to prevent relapse of conflicts.