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I would like to thank the United Kingdom for organizing this open debate. I also thank the Secretary-General and the High Commissioner for Human Rights for their briefings. We welcome the adoption of resolution which Lithuania gladly cosponsored.  Mr. President,  The Council is entrusted with the primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security. All too often, however, it has assumed this responsibility only when the conflict was in full swing and the loss of lives was too high to ignore. 

A glaring case of the Council's failure to act was that of Rwanda genocide whose 20 anniversary was marked earlier this year. UNAMIR Force Commander Roméo Dallaire warned the UN about plans to massacre Tutsis and offered to raid arms caches in Kigali. He insisted: "Where there is a will, there is a way". The will was not there, and some 800,000 people were murdered in the next 100 days. 

Examples abound when action taken was too little, too late, demanding multiple human lives and exorbitant costs of dealing with the full blown crisis. On the other hand, where the UN used its powers proactively and decisively, it managed to prevent a major crisis from taking place. One such example is Yemen, where the persistent efforts of the Special Adviser to the Secretary General, recently reinforced by a sanctions regime, have kept the situation in the country, while volatile, from degenerating into a civil war. 

UN mediation in post-election Bangladesh in 2013, the good offices of the UN Regional Center in Central Asia combined with EU and OSCE engagement in response to an outbreak of violence in Kyrgyzstan in 2010, and the often invisible work by the Standby Team of Mediation Experts at dozens of negotiations around the world speak to the importance of early preventive action. 

Today, as the Council grapples with an unprecedented number of conflicts and four level 3 humanitarian emergencies in the face of an almost chronic shortage of funds for life-saving activities, we need a qualitative leap in conflict prevention. 

Mr. President, 

As today’s resolution points out, conflict prevention is a complex undertaking consisting of various interdependent, complementary and non-sequential components.

Let me dwell on a few of them. First, informed early warning. The UN system, with its country teams in 136 countries, its peacekeeping presence, and special representatives and envoys is undoubtedly well placed to sound early warning and provide first–hand information from the field. 

Greater synergies and interactivity between UN’s own early warning capacities and those of regional and subregional organisations can strengthen that capacity even further. Early warning mechanisms already exist within the EU, AU, ECOWAS, IGAD and SADC. We therefore welcome the call in the resolution we have just adopted to examine how cooperation with regional organizations could contribute to early warning mechanisms and preventive actions. 

To improve its preventive capacity, the Council must make better use of information from the ground through interactive dialogues and briefings, including on situations of concern that are not formally on its agenda. My delegation sees the “horizon scanning” briefings as a useful if underused tool. Making such briefings less formal, more flexible and needs-based, with an emphasis on interactivity among Council members and the Secretariat could allay some of the sensitivities related to discussing a particular situation by the Council. Further improving DPA’s analytical/assessment capacities would be useful in this respect. 

Furthermore, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and Special Advisers on Genocide and Responsibility to Protect play a key role in sounding early alarm. Providing member states with prompt, reliable, unsanitised information about serious human rights violations is fully in line with the Secretary General's Rights Up Front initiative, which we wholeheartedly support. In this respect, we welcome the UN efforts to integrate human rights monitoring into peacekeeping operations. 

Second, early mediation. My delegation recognizes mediation as an important tool for defusing emergent conflicts. The good offices of the Secretary General and UN mediators should be engaged at the earliest possible stage, with all the necessary discretion. To enhance the effectiveness of this particular instrument, further support should be provided to strengthening UN mediation support capacities, including the Mediation Support Unit, the Standby Team and the Roster of Experts. 

Third, ensuring accountability. Responding to human rights violations and acting before they reach tragic proportions is a core concern of preventive action. As we know violations of minority rights, sexual and gender-based violence, intolerance, faith or ethnicity-based persecutions are among the root causes of conflict and humanitarian crises. 

If unaddressed, legitimate grievances caused by exclusion, marginalization, lack of accountability and lawlessness are bound to ignite or reignite a conflict. A crucial element of conflict prevention in our view consists in putting an end to impunity and ensuring justice for all. The Council’s strong voice and actions in support of the rule of law, accountability and justice matter a great lot. 

National truth and reconciliation commissions, commissions of inquiry and fact-finding missions tackling past atrocities are essential elements of preventing relapse into conflict and merit this Council's full support. We must also extend all the necessary support to states in restoring their judicial systems and investigating and prosecuting the perpetrators of criminal doings during the time of conflict. In line with the principle of complementarity, international judicial mechanisms and tribunals, including the International Criminal Court, have an important role in tackling impunity, ensuring justice for the victims and thus laying foundations for durable peace. 

I thank you.