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I thank Ambassador Vladimir Drobnjak (Croatia), former Chair of the Peacebuilding Commission (PBC), and Ambassador Antonio de Aguiar Patriota (Brazil), present Chair of the PBC, for their briefings. Lithuania highly values the contribution of the PBC, the Peacebuilding Fund and the Peacebuilding Support Office in support of durable peace and development in a number of countries coming out of conflicts. Advisory, advocacy and resource mobilization capacity of the Commission need to be better harnessed. Complex peace-building processes are getting more attention as evidenced by increasing number of the UN, AU and EU political missions. The integration and coherence of peacekeeping and peacebuilding efforts remain crucial for achieving durable peace and security.  

Over the last year the PBC has achieved encouraging results. In Burundi, the Commission engaged in high-level advocacy initiatives and in support of the political dialogue and preparatory process for the 2015 elections. In Liberia, the PBC support to the implementation of the National Palava Hut Programme has been crucial for the coherent national reconciliation process to take place. Impressive progress has been registered in Sierra Leone as the drawdown of UNIPSIL calls for refocusing the Commission’s activities. The PBC should remain actively engaged in support of the political dialogue and other preparatory processes, in light of the upcoming elections in many countries of the PBC agenda in 2015.

We would like to highlight three crucial elements for sustainable peace-building.

First, national institution‐building is a key to preventing relapse into conflict. In the process of building of no less importance is the focus on how those institutions are put in use.

Another crucial aspect is the national ownership. Peacebuilding cannot be outsourced. It must be locally owned. It is important to include local communities in the process and to prevent the peacebuilding from remaining a purely foreign intervention. Strengthening societies and increasing their resilience and capacity to withstand crises are key factors in assessing peacebuilding success.

Thirdly, women can and should play a very active role not only in conflict resolution but also in the peacebuilding efforts. Women, with rare exceptions, are still marginalized as players in efforts to rebuild war-torn communities and states. They were the ones who took the brunt of the conflict. Women should be in a position to envisage the path to empowerment with a full scale participation in post-war social, economic, political and security structures.

Links with the Security Council

We support the advisory role of the PBC and further encourage strengthening the links between PBC and the Security Council. The interaction between the two organs should remain mutually proactive. We see the periodic and situation-specific stocktaking briefings as a very useful and informative tool for the work of both bodies. The PBC should draw the Council’s attention to emerging threats in the countries of its agenda. What is more, we agree that the PBC can and should take a role when the Council is considering the mandate renewals and in transitions of the UN missions.

We would welcome a more proactive dialogue of the PBC with the regional and sub- regional organizations. Partnerships between the PBC and the international financial institutions, the private sector and philanthropic organizations are also important. We believe that the work in that direction should be further pursued in order to mobilize resources, identify financing gaps and avoid any possible duplication.

We also support and encourage the South‐South exchanges in the peacebuilding efforts. There has been a number of examples of such successful cooperation: in Côte d’Ivoire, where expertise from Burundi, Liberia and Senegal supported the reform of security sector; in Liberia, Rwanda provided specialized capacities in the areas of police management and administration; and the UN Mission in South Sudan benefitted from expertise from Sierra Leone in legislative work.

Peacebuilding is a long and delicate process, involving many actors and different stakeholders. We value this discussion and the interactive dialogue later this afternoon. We have much to learn and draw lessons from in preparation for the review of the UN peacebuilding architecture in 2015.