Conférence - Bâtir une paix durable
Closing conference
2019 Normandy World Peace Forum
Date: June 5, 2019

 

  • Presentation of the European Parliament's Normandy for Peace Index

The European Parliament will publish for the first time in 2019, an index of peace, measuring each year the level of conflictuality in the world. The index will be based on the global strategy for the European Union's foreign and security policy adopted in 2016 and on identified threats; hybrid threats, terrorism, cyber security, terrorism, economic instability, climate change and energy insecurity, ..). The index will measure the state of conflictuality in the world. It will be complementary to the other existing indices.

This index will be called "Normandy index" and will be presented exclusively at the forum by the European Parliament and the Institute for Economics years Peace, Australian think tank behind the Global Peace Index and recognized worldwide for their studies on state of peace.

  • How to build a sustainable peace?

Once the agreements are signed and the arms deposited, peace is not guaranteed and effective. The environmental challenges and their announced economic, security and societal consequences are a source of undeniable fragility for peace. The roadmap drawn by the UN in 2015 integrated peace and justice with the Sustainable Development Goals to be achieved by 2030. In this perspective, what are the tools to ensure the stabilization of territories in post-conflict situations and avoid the resurgence of conflict tomorrow? Do the processes of reconciliation and reconstruction and the actors involved always incorporate a long-term vision to build lasting peace?

  • Closing ceremony of the Forum

Closing remarks by Hervé Morin, President of the Normandy Region. 
Announcement of the launch of the Normandy Chair for Peace, in the presence of CNRS President Antoine Petit and the President of the University of Caen, Pierre Denise.

 

Synthesis of the conference

Moderator: Christian Makarian, Journalist, L’Express
Speakers: Justine Coulidiati-Kielem, President of the Action Group for the Promotion, Education and Training of Women and Girls, Regional Coordinator of the G5 Sahel Women’s Platform, member of Leaders for Peace; Mohamed ElBaradei, Nobel Peace Prize winner, former Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency; Geneviève Garrigos, Former President of Amnesty International; Jean-Marie Guéhenno, Member of the High-Level Advisory Board on Mediation, United Nations, former Deputy Secretary General of the Quai d’Orsay; Jean-Hervé Lorenzi, President of Le Cercle des Économistes

Although war is now multi-faceted, with military, economic, social, ethnic, linguistic, religious, geopolitical and environmental aspects, the paths to peace are all the more difficult to find because multilateralism is in crisis and questions are being asked as to the effectiveness and legitimacy of institutions which are dedicated to peace.

Calling the UN into question

Mohamed ElBaradei asks: how effective is the United Nations, given that 90% of the Security Council’s decisions are blocked? What credibility do the United Nations and the major powers have among the people? The Syrian people are aware of the almost systematic blocking of the International Criminal Court’s resolutions, as Geneviève Garrigos points out, and Mohamed ElBaradei highlights this great institution’s inability to protect them, which has led to unprecedented migration. He recalls that a recent decision by the UN Security Council failed to punish soldiers for massacring sixty Sudanese civilians on the grounds that it was an “internal affair”.
Jean-Hervé Lorenzi highlights the indispensable nature of UN intervention in many countries, including Sierra Leone, Liberia and Cambodia. However, he acknowledges that the UN’s record is more nuanced in terms of peacekeeping.

Jean-Marie Guéhenno stresses that 90% of conflicts in the 21st century have broken out in countries emerging from conflicts. In his view, peacekeeping in this situation must focus on justice, security, development and legitimacy.

Although the UN continues to be an organisation which is ahead of its time, in Jean-Hervé Lorenzi’s view, its scope and forms of action may no longer be adapted to the new challenges of peacekeeping.

 

The first challenge: development

For Jean-Hervé Lorenzi, the road to peace is neither sustainable nor straightforward in view of a significant slowdown in growth and an increase in global public debt, particularly given the need to invest to respond to the twofold challenges of climate change and the imperative to meet the basic needs of a large number of people.

Today, 800 million people do not have access to drinking water, one in nine people is hungry and two billion people live below the poverty line. Although the climate transition requires an investment estimated at some $2.5 trillion per year and the United Nations has an annual budget of $8 billion, Mohamed ElBaradei emphasises the fact that $1.3 trillion is spent every day around the world on arms. Indeed, the Nobel Peace Prize attributes dysfunctional security processes and national and international governance mechanisms to the lack of a framework for sustainable development. It calls for the implementation of a national and international social contract which will enable people to live and to accept differences and which will respect human dignity.


The second challenge: restoring national and international legitimacy 

For a long time, the establishment of a democratic process seemed to be the sine qua non of peacekeeping. Geneviève Garrigos observes that international institutions have now understood the need to implement the triptych of “truth, justice, reparation” as
espoused by Louis Joinet, a French magistrate and independent expert at the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, as a precondition to restoring confidence in the state.

Similarly, people are calling for more transparency from institutions and want to be more involved in the peace and development processes. Justine Coulidiati-Kielem observes that women miss out the most when it comes to peace processes, despite representing more than half of the population. In her view, women have a role to play as the “glue” of the family unit and within society, even in countries in which the authorities have abdicated their responsibilities. For Justine Coulidiati-Kielem, the road to sustainable peace requires their mobilisation because they will be able to defend the community’s interests and to develop projects to rebuild it.


The third challenge: reinventing multilateralism

In a world of winners and losers, the idea of crushing one’s adversary is commonplace. However, the major and on-going climatic, migratory and economy changes cannot be dealt with by fragmented management; instead, they require an in-depth understanding of their overall implications and decisionmaking between countries.

However, Geneviève Garrigos observes the emergence of growing authoritarianism, even within democratic states, accompanied by a desire to prioritise independence and national interests at all costs, even if this leads to a failure to implement international law.

In this situation, the United Nations faces a problem which is two-fold: it must be an organisation of states while focusing on representing the people and it must represent an international community which does not really exist, in Jean-Marie Guéhenno’s view. Moreover, he notes that while states, with their own priorities, cannot fully represent all people, some other entities are equally influential, including large corporations, nongovernmental organisations and criminal organisations. In this regard, Jean-Hervé Lorenzi believes that the issues of peace and freedom are one and the same, in the face of governments and societies which believe that they alone are in charge of humanity’s future.

Geneviève Garrigos calls for a global vision, inspired by Humanity First: based on the idea that defending the interests of each individual makes it possible to defend one’s own interests in a globalised world. This vision could lead to a revision of the UN’s texts which aim to take action for a more just world, offering a guarantee of sustainable peace.