Let me start by thanking Brazil for organizing today’s debate – the first ever on the Strategic Communications in Peacekeeping Operations.
Thank you, General da Costa and Ms Russo, for your valuable information.
I would like to make five quick points:
- First, world-wide we see every day how the spread of misinformation and disinformation is affecting our daily life. Unfortunately, this scourge is also affecting the security sector impacting civilians, and the UN boots on the ground as well.
Albania fully endorses A4P+ sixth priority on strategic communication and believes that it will help in minimizing disinformation and misinformation as obstacles to peace.
Misinformation, disinformation, hate speech, propaganda and conspiracy theories may bring disastrous consequences, as we have seen more than once.
Disinformation undermines facts, it hides crimes, it distorts realities. Therefore, careful communication is key to properly and securely implement the mandate of the PKO-s on the ground.
- Second, transparency of the UN activities, at every aspect and every field, including peace keeping operation, is crucial for maintaining and consolidating trust and support for the work of the organization.
We welcome every step that has been undertaken to shed light on all the cases of Sexual Exploitation and Abuse and Harassment. Blue helmets must fulfil their mission in due diligence in protecting civilians and not take advantages of those they should help and protect.
We commend MONUSCO and all other UN Missions that are making transparency in this regard, with concrete measures undertaken to ensure accountability and justice.
And this leads me to my third point, which is support for the development of a Strategy for the digital transformation. We believe that there is room to improve strategic communication by expanding it in the digital space of the UN. Enhancing safety and security of the peacekeepers with new means is much easy and timely with the proper use of digital technologies.
- Four, Protection of Civilians is the core task of each UN mission, a priority, a must. It therefore requires continued and improved communication to successfully challenge prejudice detrimental to peace operations and win the trust of communities.
- In this context, we highlight the importance of gender sensitive communication and WPS Agenda. We congratulate the PKO-s for supporting women’s full, equal and meaningful participation in local conflict prevention, resolution and political transitions. Promoting women’s work, strength and voice and with the specifics of WPS mandates for peacekeeping operations is of paramount importance to get exposed to the wide public, so they know how much WPS is essential for the peacekeeping operations.
- My fifth and last point relates to the communication between peacekeepers and local communities. Again, I will refer to the case of MONUSCO, where the UN works with local security councils in warning local authorities and the police at the slightest security threat. Prevention always saves lives. And to ensure prevention, communication is instrumental.
The use of technology for dialogue with the communities should be encouraged as best practice to maintain dialogue and feed in the political track processes.
Therefore, we support the call addressed to the Secretary General to provide a review of strategic communications across the UN peacekeeping operations, including at the headquarter level.
Thank you
