 We're delighted to have General Biram Diop who's going to speak to us about UN peacekeeping. It's a conversation with the military advisor to the UN Department of Peace Operations and General Diop, we're absolutely thrilled to have you here. Before handing over to the general, it's my also great pleasure to hand you over to Derry Fitzgerald, retired Brigadier General and Value Member of the Institute who's going to be chairing the event today. Thanks as well, Hi, good morning everyone and just a few small housekeeping rules if we could or the general would speak for 20 minutes and that will be followed by a Q&A session and both his presentation and the question and answers will both be on the record and if anybody has a question whether in the room or online, please if you're online use the zoom and we can pick you up, I'd be able to pick it up here on the tablet and in the room please if you would identify who you are and give your affiliations. If you're choosing to join us on Twitter at IIEA is the handle that is used. Now if I could say a few words on the general himself. General Diop is the military advisor to the Department of Peacekeeping Operations at the United Nations. General Diop has over 30 years of military experience, serving previously as the Chief of Defence Staff of the Senegalese Armed Forces. He has also served as the National Security Advisor to the President of Senegal and the Air Force Chief of Staff. He has also served as the Deputy and Chief of Air Operations with the United Nations missions in Manuk which is in the Congo from 2002 to 2003. And General Diop is a graduate of the Royal Air Academy in Morocco of the Air University of the United States of America and of the French War College. They really sent you around the place. General Diop, you're most welcome and pleased. Thank you, thank you very much. Amir, I'm sorry but I think I will not use this. I will just speak from the bottom of my heart. And thank you very much for giving me this opportunity to be with you and to exchange with you on a very important topic that is about peacekeeping. And before I go ahead and share my thoughts I would like to thank very much IIEA for having me, thank all the leadership and thank once again the Irish military for having me yesterday for a very good interaction session and also for a very delicious dinner. And once again thank you to my sister here, Maureen O'Brien, who has worked with me for two years and I will always tell her that we will continue to miss her. We would very much appreciate her remaining with us for many more years but this is the decision of our God we need to just accept it and will remain in touch with her forever. I always try to remind my to remind those I am interacting with. The fact is that today I think we will all agree in the fact that our world is at the crossroads facing a lot of challenges of all aspects of all types in all domains. The difficulties we are facing are so many so complex that we need to be together. We need to be in solidarity to be able to face them successfully. One alone will never be able to face successfully for a sustainable manner all these challenges. So more than ever it is extremely important for us to make sure that we keep the platform our ancestors were able to create and to give the opportunity to all of us whenever we are not happy or whenever we are facing a major challenge to go to this platform and make our voice heard make our views understood and together with the others try to find a good compromise that can help us face our difficulties. So the UN is not perfect but is a necessity. What would the world be if we did not have the UN? Maybe we would have been inventing violent ways to solve our differences the way we did it before the creation of the UN and it did not lead to a good place. We fought two world wars we had at least 60 million people who lost their lives but we were at the end of the day obliged to sit around the table and negotiate peace. So I think that the majority of people agree with the fact that the UN is a necessity. But the UN is not perfect as all human endeavors and it will never be perfect never but it's a necessity once again. Our responsibility as a generation is to do our part which is to do our best to make sure that we add value to what we have inherited from the preceding generations and the next generations will also add value so that the UN will keep improving this time and will adapt to the realities of the moment. I think at least on these two assertions the majority of people will agree the necessity is not perfect can keep improving and its generation has its own role to play in improving this extremely critical organization. And this organization also as I said yesterday when I was interacting with my military friends is not a well-known organization. Very often people expect too much from the UN. Yes it is a good platform where we can discuss all sorts of issues but it cannot solve all the problems. It can contribute to solving the problem. So the UN once again cannot be considered as the solution to all our problems. The UN can only be part of the solution to all our problems. It can only be part of the solution. Next to states individually. Next to coalition of states multilaterally. Next to regional bodies. Next to civil societies. Next to citizens. Next next next next. So the UN has a role to play but alone cannot solve all our problems. And the UN also suffers from not being very well known as I said earlier because we have not taken time to explain the role of the UN. What we can do and what we cannot do. And when I talk about this difficulty I always try to take people back to the early days of the creation of this organization. What was the intent of our funding for this. What they were trying to achieve when they created this organization. They made it very clear. They said we want to make sure that we don't want to be in war again because they created it after a very very very disastrous second world war. They said we don't want war anymore. It's not taking us nowhere. We kill people and at the end we have to sit around the table. So why don't we do it before. So fight against war. And they also realized that people were suffering a lot everywhere. And it's not to Irish people that I will tell that. We had misery in so many places where people died of anger. So they said we also want to make sure that we fight against misery. People will not starve. They will not die because of pandemics. The Spanish flu killed so many people. And finally we want people to live in a dignified manner. We do not want them to see their basic human rights violated all the times. So these are the three expectations of the founding fathers. Creating the conditions for war to not prevail, to not happen again. Fight against misery and also protect human rights. And as I said yesterday this came from the Atlantic declaration that took place when President Roosevelt of the US and Prime Minister Churchill they met in the warship in the Atlantic Ocean and talked about the same issues. This Atlantic declaration is the basis of the UN Charter. So when people are expecting from this organization to be engaged in a war it's because they're forgetting about the principles that guided the decisions our founding fathers took to create this organization. It was not about being involved in war again. So that's why our conservatives in the UN they are fiercely against any implication in combat activities. They said we created this organization to stop wars, not to participate in wars. So this is extremely important for us to remember the UN was not created to be part of wars no matter the conditions. They say no. Now the other difficulty the organization is suffering from apart this one I tried to describe not well known by people and we need to make sure that we communicate properly so that people understand what we can do and what we cannot do. The other difficulty we are now facing also is related to the political division we are witnessing today throughout the world. We're not anymore in a cold war but we are not also in a united homogeneous world. This has an implication where we take the major decisions which is at the security concern level where the winners of the second world war are given the power to have the veto power and the privilege to be what we call the permanent members. At the security council level that's where we give mandates that's where we define the framework within which we do our missions through a resolution that is voted by the members and what we have noticed recently is that whenever we try to vote a mandate it's more and more challenging. Before it was difficult but not too challenging because we could agree on something that made sense but today it's extremely challenging for us to have a mandate. Why? Because of the political division within the security council. I said yesterday that we have the liberal democracies and we have the others and very often we do not have the same position when there is a crisis. It takes longer to negotiate an agreement, to negotiate a compromise that makes sense for everybody and while we are negotiating the situation is still ongoing and sometimes deteriorating people are dying but we are negotiating to have a mandate and if we don't have a mandate we cannot go. So the mandate negotiations can delay the deployment of our troops because we cannot deploy without a mandate and when we are lucky to have a mandate the negotiations were so difficult that in general people are satisfied with the wording we have used but unfortunately the mandate very often is not adapted to the situation we want to solve. So there is a discrepancy between the mandate and the realities on the ground. This is a very big issue so even if you go and you implement your mandate you might not be solving the problem because the mandate is not always adapted to the situation you want to solve. That's also a difficulty and what is the consequence of this? One of the consequences is that when we go to the places where we are deployed we do our best to implement the mandate we are given by the international community but the major difficulties the populations are facing are still there because we are not given the authorization to work on these problems they remain and the populations are frustrated, disappointed to a point that they don't understand why we are there and very often they are so frustrated that they even start demonstrating for us to live. So there is a disconnect between those we deploy to support and to work with and us who are deployed and if we do not have the collaboration that is required between the populations and the forces there is no way we can be successful because peacekeeping is about human interaction is about working hand in hand with the local populations to be aware of the difficulties to have the intelligence we need because there's the ones who are seeing everything and who are hearing almost everything and if we don't have their collaboration there is no way we can be aware of what is happening and therefore we will not be successful so you see the ripple effect of a mandate that is not always adapted to the situation and I can go on and on and on in addition to this we talked about this earlier this new challenge we are facing today not only peacekeepers but the entire world is suffering from mis and disinformation using the social media to spread false information you know today with the cyberspace that is impacting everything we are doing in our lives one cannot anymore ignore this space where so many things are taking place sometimes very good things also are taking place very good things but very difficult things situations are also created because of social media where you can be right and be perceived as being wrong or where you can be totally wrong and be presented as being right that's what social media is achieving today very challenging what can we do we cannot get rid of it because it's part of our reality of the world now but we need to take into consideration all the all the collateral damages that are created by the social media and make sure that we take the corrective measures so that we do not continue to suffer from these collateral damage mis and disinformation and more and more malinformation are also really a poison to our peacekeeping mission and very unfair to our peacekeepers also very unfair yesterday I talked about what we call the double pain we are suffering from as peacekeepers what is double pain on the one hand we lose sometimes our lives to promote peace as peacekeepers many of us lose their lives many of us they are badly wounded for the rest of their lives many of us are socially impacted in their families because they were away for a quite while so we suffer a lot because of our implication in peacekeeping but yet because of the manipulation of the information we are presented as useless people it's a double pain because in many of our missions people are being successful in presenting peacekeepers as useless people presenting missions are useless missions while we are doing a lot of good things so this is not fair to peacekeepers I think we need to correct this we are not succeeding 100 percent but we are not failing 100 percent and I think that to just be convinced that we are not useless one should be asking himself or herself this very simple question what would be the situation if we were not there what would be the situation in minusma if we were not there what would be the situation in minusca in central african republic if we were not there I think if we ask ourselves this question we will see very easily that we are not that useless as people pretend as to be and more and more peacekeeping is also suffering from the economy that is not in good shape today we are facing economic challenges almost everywhere in the world and the situation was worsened by COVID-19 that has slowed down our world economy and more and more public opinions are less patient they're more and more impatient and they want their problems to be solved right now and the political leadership cannot ignore this call of the public opinion so they're trying to focus more on solving their national concerns which is legitimate and more and more countries are having difficulties to concomitantly deal with national concerns and international responsibilities the number one consequence is that we are not having all the funds we should be having to undertake in the best conditions possible our peacekeeping mission so funds we're having more difficulties to have all the funds therefore all the capacities all the capabilities to go perform our missions in the best conditions possible and if you don't have money even at the individual level you're in big trouble you need money it's never enough but you need to have the minimum to do what you have to do and it takes me to another challenge we are facing is about the availability of the required capabilities here we have a conjunction of circumstances the economy that is not in good shape but also the reality that makes it extremely difficult for western countries to be part of peacekeeping mission we have observers we have staff officers we have experts on mission yes they play a very important role but we have less and less units from the west less and less units from the west and the direct consequence of this is that we are lacking of very good capabilities because the west is known as being very good at certain in certain domains and having very good capabilities so we are being a bit paralyzed by the fact that we cannot anymore rely on the availability of these very modern and good capabilities coming from the west because western countries are having more and more difficulties to convince their public opinion that they should be taking the risk to send their children to crises that are taking place thousands of miles far from their boundaries many western countries do not think that they should be sending the people to those crises taking place in so many if very far away and one one situation that has led to this decision is generally the implication of the americans and many other western countries in the crisis in Somalia in 1992 it did not go well you remember when CNN showed the american soldiers who were killed by the rebels and their bodies dragged on the street of some Mogadishu people were shocked and they started asking themselves why are we sending our people in crisis we have nothing to do they were all repatriated because the images were so bad and public opinion did not like it CNN effect resigned it's because CNN was there if CNN was not there maybe it would have been very difficult for the public opinion to be aware this was a major turning point of peacekeeping two years later we had a genocide in Rwanda CNN was also there and showed almost one million people who lost their lives the public opinion did not like that they said we cannot also cross our arms and letting people die so you have two conflicting situations on the one hand we don't want to go on the other hand we cannot cross arms so the compromise after these two events was to from now give the capabilities to those who can send the groups and that's what we're trying to do third world countries called the ones taking the risk benefiting from the funding and the support of those who are putting their hands in the pocket but are they doing it enough you you never do it enough so that's the situation so capabilities today are really of concern the third world countries are doing what they can but sometimes they do not have access to those capabilities that could make the difference so this is also something particularly in the aviation domain yesterday I said that for the ground capabilities we have about 124 countries out of 194 member states contributing one way or another to making available ground capabilities 124 it's almost two-thirds of the member state which is okay we can do better but it's not bad now if you go to the figures in terms of aviation capabilities you are extremely surprised because out of 194 member states at the best case scenario you have 12 countries making available aviation capabilities particularly helicopters we need very badly to operate in very difficult mobility conditions in our mission so we don't have helicopters it's extremely difficult to have the helicopters we need to operate in the best conditions possible and this is very penalizing and sometimes we have only 10 countries that are contributing military helicopters because we need military helicopters to support our uniformed people who are deployed in our mission so this is a capacity gap that is very penalizing for these people now the list of the challenges is very long but I don't want to be the only one speaking I don't want to monopolize the flow I want us to discuss it as a family to see how we can with our exchanges improve our very important organization and the mission this organization is doing but I cannot wrap it up without talking about an issue that is very important to me it's one of my strongest convictions it's about the gender dimension of what we do to me our humanity is being very badly penalized to not give itself the possibility in peacekeeping at least to make sure that both men who are very capable and women who are also extremely capable to participate equally to peacekeeping if we do not create the right conditions that give both to men and to women the same chances to participate in their own security in my opinion it will be very difficult for us to be successful because men can bring a lot of things and I respect my men colleagues but women also can do a lot of things and if we only have men playing the major role in peacekeeping we're missing a very important contribution from our women colleagues who because of sexual specificities can bring things men will never be able to bring so we're complementary but in the right condition and I think all studies that were undertaken to identify the value added brought by a good presence of women and men in the same space in the same workplace all these studies have demonstrated very easily that when we are rightly mixed we're always better we're always stronger we're always more capable because we have a better collective intelligence but I insist in the factors that we need to have the right conditions where nobody is discriminated nobody is discriminated because of his or her gender and this is true in peacekeeping it was demonstrated that the victims of crisis are mainly women and their children and these women are very reluctant to share their experiences their sufferings with men but very easily open to discussions with their women colleagues to just give one value added that can be brought by the participation of women peacekeepers they have very close interaction with the women victims of the crisis which is extremely important for us to be successful in the work we are doing in favor of this woman and the other advantages are many so let us make sure that we have a good mix when we deploy it's not acceptable in the 21st century to have less than 10 percent of women who are present in our peacekeeping we are not reflecting the world we belong to in this world in all countries you go you will see at least 50 50 sometimes more women than men and we still continue to go as men trying to get things done alone that's not acceptable so I finish it there and I will be more than happy to respond to questions and also very happy to listen to your comments and your recommendation so that we can go back to New York better empowered with new recommendations we can use to improve to improve the work we are doing on your behalf in New York thank you very much thank you