Statement by the Permanent Representative of Brazil to the United Nations, Ambassador Sérgio França Danese, on "Peace through dialogue: the contribution of regional, subregional and bilateral arrangements to the prevention and peaceful resolution of disputes" - October 20th, 2023

I thank Her Excellency former President Michelle Bachelet, His Excellency former President Thabo Mbeki, Assistant Secretary-General Khaled Khiari and Dr. Ms. Josefina Echevarría Álvarez for sharing their views and experiences with mediation and the peaceful settlement of disputes. I also welcome His Excellency Mr. Igli Hasani, Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Albania, and Her Excellency Ms. Noura Al Kaabi, Minister of State at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of the United Arab Emirates to the debate.

I would like to begin by conveying that His Excellency Ambassador Mauro Vieira, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Brazil, deeply regrets not being present here today. He was asked to represent Brazil at tomorrow’s Cairo summit and thought rightly that the urgency and gravity of the situation required his presence there.

Colleagues

Brazil’s current mandate at the Security Council coincided with a big turmoil in international politics, with many challenges to the maintenance of international peace and security. Our second presidency started with renewed violence in perhaps the oldest and most protracted situation of conflict since the United Nations was established. In some of the new conflict situations arising, just as in the very long conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, which is again claiming so many innocent lives, the Council has been ineffective, and it continues to lose its credibility and legitimacy. But the collective security system built upon the Charter of the United Nations remains our best option. Let us work to improve it.

There are some ways of doing so, but there is one that has not gotten the attention it should. The Council must dedicate more energy to revitalizing its role as a promoter of conflict prevention and peaceful solutions. We should talk more about peace and about how to achieve peace. We owe this to that quarter of humankind struggling to survive under conflict.

Distinguished Representatives,

There are two things the Council can do to improve its effectiveness today: it should look inwards, and it should also look outwards. Looking inwards means revisiting its original mandate and rediscovering some of its own tools for fulfilling that mandate. Looking outwards means referring to initiatives that have been successful in other mechanisms at other levels of governance.

Chapter VI gave the Council wide latitude to be creative in its use of peaceful means. Beyond the long list of tools described in Article 33, Article 36 empowers the Council to recommend appropriate procedures or methods of adjustment, without limitations on what those may be. Unfortunately, creativity in providing political solutions has waned in the past several years, as the Council has focused increasingly on coercive measures. Over half of the resolutions adopted last year explicitly referenced Chapter VII, and others still included actions that would be best placed under Chapter VII.

This over-reliance on Chapter VII has had negative effect. It has made consensus harder to reach, it has limited the Council’s ability to adapt to specific crises, and it has also made it more challenging to engage the parties on the ground, which has often led to less durable solutions. Yet, elsewhere, peaceful solutions have continued to be used creatively and effectively. That is why the Council must also turn outwards to examine where preventive diplomacy, mediation and other tools of peaceful settlement have proven successful and what lessons that might bring to the Council’s own activities. We can find a wealth of examples of the peaceful resolution of conflicts in all regions of the world.

Sometimes solutions have taken place through institutions, sometimes through direct bilateral or plurilateral action. In our region, Latin America, we have had successful direct bilateral settlements on territorial disputes and trilateral diplomatic settlements on the use of rivers, for instance. The Brasilia Accord between Peru and Ecuador, signed 25 years ago, putting an end to a long-standing territorial dispute, is a wonderful example of this kind of achievement. We have also developed successful bilateral confidence-building initiatives through the establishment of institutions, such as the Brazilian-Argentine Agency for Accounting and Control of Nuclear Materials, as well as broad regional confidence-building initiatives, such as the Rio Group and the Agency for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America and the Caribbean, to name but a few examples. These are the product of the determination to put rivalries and disputes behind and look ahead, tackling our true common challenges, such as poverty, inequality, social and regional disparities, economic bottlenecks, sustainable development and so many others that face our societies and defy our sovereignties.

Despite the many different contexts, regional experiences have one thing in common: the strengthening of trust, the good use of diplomacy, true political will and confidence-building. Trust and confidence-building are the common denominators of any successful process of a peaceful settlement or conflict resolution through peaceful means. When a trusted third party is available, it can act as mediator, making up for the lack of trust between the parties in conflict. When regional institutions are considered more reliable, they can step in and perform a similar role. When a trusted international institution, such as the International Court of Justice, is consensually chosen to help, it can decide effectively on a dispute.

Colleagues,

The Security Council may use its reinvigorated tools under Chapter VI in a variety of ways, supporting those regional and subregional processes more robustly. The establishment of special political missions is an example of action under Chapter VI that can be further explored and improved. For them to be more effective in their objective of sustaining peace, they require appropriate funding separate from the regular budget, under a mechanism that reflects the special responsibilities of the permanent members, just as is the case with peacekeeping operations authorized by the Council. They also require realistic and achievable mandates carefully tailored to specific situations. They cannot be seen as a lower-cost version of peacekeeping operations. Finally, they would be strengthened by closer coordination between the Council and the Peacebuilding Commission, which in turn would contribute to more durable results. There is still room for more creativity. The Security Council has been prolific in creating subsidiary bodies to monitor sanction regimes; yet there is scarcely any subsidiary body dedicated to accompanying and supporting political processes under Chapter VI. Such bodies could be created today, under the Council’s current powers.

Finally, the Council should look to regional experiences in the peaceful settlement of disputes with a healthy degree of humility. We must seek to actively learn from successful experiences elsewhere. We can find inspiration in different regions of the world for initiatives that complement United Nations efforts. Our briefers today have offered many examples.

Distinguished Representatives,

We need to expand the Security Council in order for it to become more representative of the United Nations membership. More voices around the table can help overcome the logic of rivalry that periodically paralyses many decisions here — and not only now in these almost two years that Brazil has been watching it again from the inside, but for many decades, as is the case when it comes to the conflict between Israel and Palestine. In the past, even amid fierce competition and deep-seated mistrust in several specific circumstances, political leaders and Governments could find space for cooperation and confidence-building by looking inward and outward. They came up with different types of tools to prevent or resolve conflicts. We now desperately need leaders and Governments to be courageous and far-sighted. While we continue to strive for the Council we want, we must not lose sight of how best to work with the Council as it is now. That was the reason behind the proposal for this debate. I hope it will offer us some thought-provoking ideas. I thank members for their participation and for the long list of speakers willing to share their views.