 Good afternoon everyone and welcome to the Institute of International and European Affairs here in Dublin. My name is Jerry Fitzgerald and it is my pleasure to present today's webinar which is part of the European Global Project supported by the Department of Foreign Affairs. We have the honour to have as our guest today the Undersecretary General for Peacekeeping Jean-Pierre Lacroix and he's going to speak on peacekeeping for approximately 20 minutes. Before I hand over to Secretary-General Lacroix, I'd like to do some housekeeping issues with you. You would be able to join us on Zoom using your Q&A function and please feel free to send in your questions as they occur to you during the presentation. Also we will get to all of those questions after the presentation. Please you are also invited to join us on Twitter using the handle at IIEA. Both the presentation and the questions will be on the record and we are also live streaming today's presentation so a very warm welcome to all of you who are joining us via YouTube. Now let me introduce Undersecretary-General Jean-Pierre. He was appointed as Secretary-General to as appointed Undersecretary-General for Peacekeeping by the Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in 2017. Prior to that during the years 2014 to 2017, Mr Lacroix served as Director for United Nations International Organisations, Human Rights and Francophone at the French Ministry for Foreign Affairs. Other appointments include Ambassador of France to Sweden, the Chief of Protocol of France and the Deputy Permanent Representative of the Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York. Now let me say a few words by way of talking about peacekeeping. It has been written that the peacekeeping has become and is a remarkable achievement for the multilateral system and it is likely to remain one of the most visible symbols of global governance and international cooperation. Yet in 2022 we have seen a marked shift in the severity of intra- and interstate conflict and therefore the security for the peacekeepers and the environment in which they operate has changed and deteriorated. In tandem with this marked change we have certain tensions that have been, I suppose, increased among the permanent members of the Security Council. But yes, the UN and under Secretary-General Jean Thierre, the UN has moved to address and mitigate the current and future challenges by bringing forward new actions for peacekeeping and for being prepared to strengthen these new actions to ensure that the effectiveness of peacekeeping is maintained. Under Secretary-General will discuss the current state of UN peacekeeping, the challenge it is facing, and what more is needed to ensure that we use this unique multilateral tool to its maximum use. Under Secretary-General you are most welcome and the floor is yours. Thank you very much and good morning. I am very honored to be invited by the Institute of International and European Affairs and I certainly look forward to this discussion and to your questions. But let me begin by saying a few words about where peacekeeping is today. We have 12 peacekeeping missions. They're very different. Some of them are small in size or relatively small. I'm a few hundred personnel. I believe the smallest is probably the mission we have in the Kashmir area called UNMOGIP, which is an old observation mission. We have large missions that are almost with a budget of $1 billion per year each and a level of staff close to around 20,000 personnel, military, civilian, and police. Those missions are also very different regarding the mandates. To simplify a bit, we have these traditional peacekeeping missions or so-called traditional peacekeeping missions. Those mandates are essentially about monitoring ceasefires, the likes of Cyprus or Western Sahara to a certain extent, UNIFIL, and also the one that I mentioned, UNMOGIP as well as UNDOF on the Golden Heights. We also have so-called multi-dimensional missions with a much broader mandate that cover not only the support to ceasefires or whenever they exist, but also and very much importantly, so the protection of civilians, the support to political efforts aimed at achieving a long-lasting and durable peace, capacity building as well as monitoring and reporting on human rights, and many other mandated tasks. But I think in spite of all these differences, I think it's very important to emphasize that in the end every single peacekeeping operation is political and has a political purpose because they're all aimed at either creating or preserving conditions for political efforts to be taken forward with a view to reaching a durable solution to those situations in which we are involved. And this is where we have a problem on which I will elaborate a bit more moving forward, but I think it's very important to emphasize this political nature of peacekeeping. Now much of this discussion will be about the challenges that peacekeeping operations are facing and rightly so, but I think it's equally important to emphasize the achievements, the past and most importantly, the present achievements of peacekeeping operations. In the past, many countries have been successfully supported and I think the keyword is supported by peacekeeping operation in moving from a situation of crisis towards a durable peace. And you have many such examples like Cambodia, Angola, Mozambique, El Salvador, Côte d'Ivoire, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and so on and so forth. And I'm not saying that these countries do not have any problem, of course they do and most countries in the world have problems, but with the help of peacekeeping operation, they reached a stage where peacekeeping operations became irrelevant to their situation and a stage where a more stable and peaceful situation had been achieved. And I'm saying the support is a keyword because this was, yes, with the support of peacekeeping operation, but that was not done by peacekeeping operations alone. And I will also elaborate further on this critical importance of partnership for the success of peacekeeping. Now, today it is much more difficult for peacekeeping operations to see the achievement of durable peace. And that's because we have a more divided international community. I will get back to that later. But at the same time, the achievements of our peacekeepers on a day-to-day basis are, I believe, very significant and they need to be emphasized. One of them is protection of civilians because our missions, particularly in those big missions in Africa, do protect and probably make the difference between life and that for hundreds of thousands of civilians. They support humanitarian systems, they protect the IDPs and the refugees, and they do create areas of enhanced security where the civilians can return to their normal lives. Of course, this is protection of civilians is an issue where expectations are always very high and peacekeeping operations are not always able to meet these expectations, but yet the achievement of our peacekeepers regarding protection of civilians are very significant. And I see that every time I go to the field and I meet the population that are protected by our peacekeepers and I see and I hear from them, you know, how much of the difference those peacekeepers have made. Equally important is the preservation and monitoring of ceasefire. I do believe that if you remove peacekeeping operations such as unfeasible in Cyprus or unified in Lebanon or the operation in Western Sahara, you're likely to see a much more tense and potentially very dangerous situation on the ground. And that's because these operations perform a unique function of liaising, deterring, preventing incidents from escalating and that is absolutely critical to preserve peace. And of course, I should also mention the achievement when it comes to building capacities, but of course, building state capacity is important, but we need to have political space to do that and the monitoring and reporting on human rights, however challenging and difficult this may be. Now, let's go to the challenges. I mean, those many of these challenges are not new actually. In fact, peacekeeping operation by definition is deployed in situations in areas that are challenged in many ways, but I would point out that over the last couple of years, indeed, those challenges have become more daunting and there are a number of reasons for that. I think one of them and the most important one is, again, a political challenge. I mentioned the fact that when peacekeeping was successful and fully successful, meaning that peacekeeping was able to achieve its ultimate goal, which is the achievement of durable political situation and then being able to eventually downgrade and leave. Well, this can be achieved only if our work is strongly supported by other partners, particularly by our member states, the most influential ones or in a given situation, of course, that can be regional partners or permanent members of the Security Council or any other member with the member states with an influence. And that works when the international community is united and committed to be actively involved in those political efforts. However, we have an increasingly divided international community, which an increasingly divided Security Council and therefore a membership and partners who are less willing and less able to actually engage actively in support of the political efforts that are absolutely critical to achieve durable peace. And this is absolutely significant, because parties to a conflict and particularly parties to an agreement will only move forward if they are incentivized, encouraged and indeed sometime pressured to do so. But with the divided international community, with the divided membership, it is much, it's very rare actually to have that kind of united support for those political efforts. Yes, of course, the Security Council and the General Assembly are still united enough to give us our mandates or to extend our mandates and to give us finances. And this is of course important, although I saw that there are more cases where our mandates are extended by the Security Council without unanimity, which itself is an indication that we have less united support. So this is the major challenge and it comes back to the fact that what we call the primacy of politics that in the end all peacekeeping operation is about supporting political efforts is about politics and therefore lack of political commonality amongst our membership is absolutely critical to us and a major problem. But in addition to that, of course, peacekeeping operations are facing increasingly challenging threats on the ground. And that is because we are facing more armed groups that are not necessarily interested in any political efforts or which have no political purpose. We see that every day, particularly in our missions in Africa, where many of the armed groups that are after us and after the population we protect are essentially about illegal exploitation of natural resources or sometime combined with the ideological sort of veneer or terrorist purposes. And most of these armed groups are actually happy to continue with chaos. They're not particularly interested in peace efforts actually. They thrive on chaos and on looting and going after the civilian population and terrorizing them and therefore it makes it very difficult to engage them. But in addition to that, the ways in which our peacekeepers are threatened and are also evolving and we're facing more threats such as the improvised explosive devices, not only in Mali, which has been characterized for quite a number of years by the predominance of that threat, but also in other mission as well. We're faced with more sophisticated threats in the form of the use of drone to recognize our camps, attack sophisticated attacks against our camps and so on and so forth. And the equally important and dangerous threats of fake use and misinformation, which can potentially kill not only peacekeepers, but also civilian population and enhance and exacerbate divisions and tensions across communities and in the areas where we are deployed. And all of this of course is enhanced by the new tools that are the disposal of those spoilers, the new technologies, the the use of social networks, the I mentioned the drones and all these easy to obtain tools that are now making these groups and these these actors in a much better position to threaten our peacekeepers and the population we protect. Now, in addition to that, I think it's clear that we're also facing a number of drivers of conflict that are gradually acquiring a greater importance. One of them is definitely climate change and we're seeing particularly but not only in our African mission that the impact of climate change is results in heightened tension between communities because it's it results in greater exacerbated competition for natural resources such as land, water, and so on and so forth. And we're seeing this, as I said, very much show in South Sudan, in Mali, in the Central African Republic. We're also seeing the increasing importance of transnational criminal activities, trafficking in drugs, weapons, human beings and so on so forth, the looting of natural resources and how this contributes to exacerbating tension and further destabilizing the region in which we are operating and all of this compounded by pre-existing ethnic tensions and so on so forth. And faced with these increasing challenges and increasingly important drivers of conflict, I should also add the impact of the pandemic and now the war in Ukraine. Peacekeeping always had a discrepancy between the mission it's been given and the capacities and this has been so for for quite a long time but of course the more these challenges become daunting and significant and the more these issues with capacities need to be addressed. Now let me turn to how we could try, we were trying to respond to these challenges. When we started, I started in 2017 and more or less at the same time with Secretary General Antonio Guterres, the Secretary General launched first of all an initiative on the safety and security of our peacekeepers and that was because we had an increasingly high numbers of fatalities and injuries amongst our peacekeepers particularly resulting from IEDs and there was an action plan that was devised to address this issue but then we expanded, we went quickly to a second phase which was to expand this to a broader initiative aimed at candidly sharing the challenges and issues that we were facing with peacekeeping with our member states and engaging in concerted and collaborative efforts with our member state to address these challenges and that was the purpose of the so-called action for peacekeeping initiative. Now the action for a peacekeeping initiative led to many different works found ranging from working on improving capacities, improving training, improving the way in which we strengthen conduct and discipline, and we address particularly the issue of sexual exploitation and abuse in peacekeeping. Also, and this is very much about improving the effectiveness of peacekeeping and increasing the number and role of women in peacekeeping operations and a number of other works found including greater support to health and medical support to our peacekeepers and also working on lowering the environmental footprint of peacekeeping. All these actions being particularly the latter being very closely coordinated with the sister department within the Secretariat which is called the Department of Operational Support. Now, last year we was three years after the implementation of the start of the implementation of the action for a peacekeeping initiative which by the way was supported by a foundational department, the document which we call the Declaration of Shared Commitment and which was endorsed by 154 member states. Again, the action for peacekeeping initiative is very much about making it clear that the Secretariat has responsibilities in working to address the challenges that peacekeeping faces but so have member states. We very much rely on member states and engagement and support to help us address these challenges. Now, last year we took stock of what we had achieved. We decided that our priorities needed to be updated and focused on what I would call perhaps the highest-hanging fruits, the more systemic issues which were still requiring more efforts. We came up with the set of new updated priorities which we regroup under the umbrella of the so-called action for a peacekeeping plus initiative. Now, again, these priorities are the following. First, again, the political dimension. We want to insist on that, not necessarily because these are, this is the issue on which we have the biggest leverage but this is by way of again impressing upon our member states that ultimately all peacekeeping missions are about political efforts and we need more political support from our member states for these political efforts. But we also identified a number of other priorities in this effort to update our work strand. One of them is integration because peacekeeping operations, particularly the multi-dimensional one, are complex. They involve civilian, police and military personnel but also humanitarian colleagues and other partners working in the field such as other regional, sub-regional organization and how to make sure that we work in a more integrative manner. We also determined that communication and countering fake news and disinformation has to be a priority because of the increased importance and significance of that threat on our peacekeeping operations. We also determined that we need to make more efforts on what I call information gathering, situational awareness and how to be more effective, more integrated, again on collecting information with the view to better prevent threats against ourselves and against civilians and then be able to act upon these threats in a way that is effective and coordinated. We also of course confirmed the importance of continuing our work on increasing the role and number of women in peacekeeping where I believe we're doing good, we're gradually increasing the number of women in peacekeeping but we need to do more and there are certain areas where it's proving to be more difficult and particularly the senior military leaders as well as military contingent. Another key priorities which we highlighted and for which we now have established a strategy is to make sure that peacekeeping will make the better use, the best use of existing new technologies and that is why we developed a strategy for the digital transformation of peacekeeping with the number of sub-priorities having to do with again information gathering, fake news, communication and so on and so forth but the purpose is really to make sure that we would enhance the digital literacy of peacekeeping and that we would be able again to make the best use of the new digital tools. Now all of this of course will continue to require the support of our member states in many ways, support in terms of capacities because we still lack capacities particularly as the needs of peacekeeping operations are evolving and the emphasis that we're putting on mobility, reactivity, results in more requests from on helicopters, any means of quick rapid transportation, quick reaction forces, intelligence capacities and so on so forth so we of course ID counter ID units so we continue to depend on our peacekeeping on our troop and police contributing countries for that but we also need their support so that we can go forward and implement our various work strand our various strategies on digital transformation, on increasing the number of women and the role of women in peacekeeping with the LC initiative and many other work strands for which we need expertise from our member states and also support including support by voluntary funding. Now if I look beyond these efforts at improving the tool that is peacekeeping I think that more efforts to try to address the emerging or maybe not so emerging anymore drivers of conflict that I've mentioned are very important. Of course climate change cannot be solved by peacekeeping operation but we need and we probably can do more but that would require more partnership to mitigate the impact of climate change and one example is the exacerbated tension between farmers and harders and herders in Africa where we have started implementing a few program aimed at de-conflicting but we need to do more. I think the other example that I would put forward is the growing impact of transnational criminal activities and this is where I believe our system can and should do more. There's a lot that is being done of course by the UNODC in Vienna but I definitely believe that the magnitude of this challenge and the stabilizing impact on peace and security would warrant that we do more on this and the problem with these drivers of conflict is that they are most of them actually all of them are of a regional and global nature and peacekeeping is essentially based on you know it's peacekeeping operations are deployed in one state in most cases I mean sometimes the notion of you know what belongs to whom is of course is significant in some of our peacekeeping mission but essentially they're very nation-based and that is a problem when it comes to making more efforts to deal with those regional and global drivers of conflict and here I believe that more integration across the system and with our partners would be needed. Finally and I will stop here. Sometimes the question is posed you know what is the relevance of peacekeeping operation where there's no peace to keep and shouldn't there be a better solution with for example regional peace enforcement forces. I think it's clear that peacekeeping even robust peacekeeping with robust mandates you know chapter seven mandates and with the right mindset the right understanding of the mandate is not waging war and I think it will never be like waging war. I think there's a limit to what peacekeeping operation can do even as I say with the robust mandate so definitely there is a space for and just talking about security dimension of resolving conflict because of course there are many other dimensions but there certainly is more space for regional peace enforcement or so-called peace enforcement forces and we've always been supported at the UN of a greater support to these regional forces particularly in Africa. I have to say though that the challenge for these regional forces to be effective are many and I believe that this will be a long-term effort before we can see and particularly in Africa before we can see effective and well-integrated and well-operated regional peace enforcement forces so it's not only a question of financial resources would be important for that but it's not only a question of financial resources I think this is the topic that would require a long-term effort and of course long-term is not always you know the vision and the horizon of the UN and certainly even less so with all due respect to our member states and that is of course an obstacle to what would be I think needed which is a sort of sustained program of the decades of greater support to these efforts at putting in place regional capacity particularly in Africa for peace enforcement. So I think I will stop here I look forward to your question and of course I thank you for your attention. Thank you very much Under Secretary General that was a very comprehensive and frank presentation of the challenges and your responses could I start with some of the questions and the first one I just to fit on what you the topic you finished on was funding. Peacekeeping is a very expensive operation it's expensive in troop deployments equipment support staff and we have seen that the previous US administration decided to reduce funding. Has this impacted on the mission areas that you are responsible for and I suppose if you could put a rider on top of that as we face into a potentially a global recession will the lack of funds impact further on mission areas. Thank you well I think first of all it's important to put the cost of peacekeeping is in perspective the current budget of peacekeeping operation is about six billion dollars per year and we have close to between 90,000 and 100,000 personnel deployed on the ground in 12 different missions now six billion dollars more or less the same annual budget as the annual budget of the New York City Police Department. So and of course New York is relatively safe but you still have issues of crime and violence in that city. So another indicator is the often mentioned figure of 0.5 you know the peacekeeping annual budget corresponds more or less to 0.5 percent of and total defense related expenditures in the in the world each year. So I think it's you know it's fair to make the point that peacekeeping is not that expensive after all and there are many researchers who highlighted the fact that the bank for the bugs who speak was quite was quite positive and good for the service that provides peacekeeping even though as I say we would wish to be able to achieve more often what I call the ultimate goal of peacekeeping which is to to be able to draw down and leave and leave behind us durable peace. Now yes we we had some additional pressure on our on the peacekeeping budget over the last year particularly with the previous US administration I have to say though that first of all a degree of pressure on our budget is not necessarily unhealthy I mean I think you know we we are answerable to our member states and we need to be prudent when it comes to using our resources. Second thing is that in the end even though there was and in a way still is not only it's not only the US to be fair there is sort of background music or background noise you know pointing to the need of you know being prudent and when it comes to our budget we we we saw we we haven't seen a very significant impact on our peacekeeping operation we saw some of it and I think that you know we we would of course we could use more resources on particularly given the importance of the threats against our peacekeepers and that is really the point that I try to emphasize when I discuss on a budget related issues but the overall coming back to the previous US administration the overall sort of sense that you know peacekeeping budget had to be reduced in the end deep translate in a very much case by case and pragmatic approach to each peacekeeping operations. Now moving forward I think you're right I mean we don't know what the impact of the current crisis will be on the public finances of our member states and this is something on which we don't have we don't have any leverage the only thing on which we have leverage is to continue our efforts to make sure that peacekeeping operations will be as effective and as impactful as possible that that is really where we we have leveraged and that that that is why we are determined to not only continue with step up our efforts on the various A4P and A4P plus priorities that I mentioned earlier. Thank you for that I'm going to go to questions now that are coming from our contributors the first I have here is from Keane Fitzgerald no relation he is the defense researcher here in the IIEA as peacekeeping operations have become more complicated intensive and dangerous is there a potential that the increased demands on present peacekeeping operations will create further divides among funding contributing countries and troop contributing countries. Well you know we we are in in a situation where because of the the visions of across you know in our membership I don't think but I may be wrong I don't think that we we have prospects of creation of new peacekeeping operations anytime soon because the the the the creation of a peacekeeping operation assumes or can happen in in in a given in given conditions where on the one hand the international community security council determines that something has to be done on a given situation but then that our member states and particularly most influential ones are not interested in in in you know getting involved on a national basis or or to put it differently in situations where the the competitive spirit does not prevail over the multilateral approach and unfortunately we are in a situation where the the competition across you know amongst our member states is is growing and and therefore the appetite to to to deal or to bring responses to a crisis through multilateral action is is diminishing and I think that is why even though one could have imagined with a more united nature international community or peacekeeping efforts in situations such as Yemen or or Syria that or even Libya you know with more unity and and more united pressure on the parties that that is not the case now on the one on the other hand of course we do demand more from our member states in in terms of the right capacities and also in terms of making sure that we have adequate resources now and of course our true contributing countries are making the point that they yes they they they have their own responsibility in providing us with the right capacities well trained well equipped and so on so forth but they also rightly make the point that they need those adequate resources I you know I think that we're not seeing an increasingly significant divide you know between let's say those who are you know paying the most and those who are you know the biggest true contributing countries I believe that what is important is to for us to continue to engage our membership as a whole I'm pressing upon them the the challenges that we face impressing upon them also what we achieve and and and how we can work together so that we can continue to to to better or to to deliver on the mandate that are given to us in the best possible conditions now it is also important for us to make sure that we retain as much as possible geographical balance in our true contributing countries and therefore the importance of having TCCs from not only from Asia or Africa the global south of course they're much appreciated but also from Europe the American continent and the you know countries in Asia with an advanced economy all of this is also very much important because that also creates greater commonality in terms of the understanding of the the challenges of peacekeeping and and and also more unity in terms of you know the the actual involvement of our member states in the ground you know on the ground with us in peacekeeping operations the next question is is coming from Park Murphy who is a member of the institute and he asked can you give us an idea why some 30 member states did not support the most recent initiative in the UN regarding peacekeeping I would like to to ask I mean to respond with the question what initiative exactly are you are you talking about no I'm afraid I can't help you in that okay and perhaps Eric might come back on that one and if you like we can move on to another question I mean I might you know make just a few comments you know overall I believe and this is not you know this is truly what what I believe that peacekeeping benefits from and relative to many other activities by the UN benefits from quite a large degree of support and you know we saw that when we submitted to the member states the declaration of shared commitment that I mentioned earlier you know with the 154 member states subscribing to the document which is more than three quarters of the of the membership and I think the reason why we're having this high level of support is it's because the peacekeeping is very much it's a very broad partnership in the in the UN you know the vast majority of our member states are involved one way or another in peacekeeping either because they are troop or police contributing country or they're or because they are involved or interested in a given situation where peacekeeping is active or because they're member of the security council of financial contributors and so on so forth we have 120 troop and police contributing countries so only that you know creates quite a significant constituency for peacekeeping and if you add to that again the other member states who would have an interest in peacekeeping for other reason I think you end up with a very large partnership and frankly with a very significant base of support for peacekeeping so I'm not too worried of course we need to maintain that level of strong support but I'm not too worried about the you know peacekeeping in you know not being supported enough by member states in principle but of course we push for actual support on political and capacity and financial support that that is quite clear we'll continue to push for that. I'm going to to blend some questions together because we have quite an amount of questions coming in. The first of these would be from Gerard Hearn who's a retired bigotier general and has extensive overseas experience. Do you have any concerns from the international optics perspective that the soldiers deploying to UN peacekeeping missions have for some time and continuing are predominantly predominantly from African and Asian countries? I'm going to blend that one with another question from Keane Fitzgerald he said if you incorporate the war that's taking place in Ukraine is it feasible that some countries will say it is time for us to build up our own defenses and perhaps we cannot spare any resources to UN missions? All right well on the first question I mean we are very happy to have TCCs from African from Asia particularly South Asia and they account for an important percentage of the troops that are deployed and also police but at the same time and you know they also have particularly when it comes to some of the those true contributing countries they can also provide us with the initial added value you know one example is the recent deployment of units from Kenya and Tanzania in the eastern part of the DRC which are Swally speaking which also provides us with an additional sort of advantage in that region but I think as I indicated earlier we also want to preserve and even enhance a greater geographical balance when it comes to our troop and police contributing countries so we're very happy to have Ireland as a strong troop contributing country for many decades we also have other troop contributing countries from Europe but it is important to preserve that geographical balance because peacekeeping is a UN activity has to be global it has to be representative of our geographical diversity now when it comes to Ukraine and the question that was posed about you know whether some countries would be sort of would eventually sort of potentially deep prioritize peacekeeping relative to emerging needs for their defense we will see but what I noted is that you know in talking particularly with the various European countries at the senior level of course Ukraine is an important priority to them that's quite clear but at the same time and of course from the even broader perspective it's an additional element that further exacerbates the division you know across our membership and the international community that's quite clear at the same time I also perceived that there was there still is a recognition that the security challenges coming from the Middle East coming from from Africa continue to be significant from a European perspective being a European I sort of can relate to that so on the one hand of course countries that are most affected by the situation in Ukraine yes we'll have to make choices when it comes to allocation of their resources and how they you know they profile the term in the priorities within the sphere of their defense spending but at the same time I take it also that there is as I say not only an understanding of the challenges coming from from regions where our peacekeeping operations are deployed but also another understanding which is that the growing interconnection of these various conflicts and of course we're seeing that now with the impact of the Ukraine war on food supply or on the global economy and of course the tensions that will resolve the even greater tension that may arise from the situation that is thus created and I think the this growing understanding of the interconnection between the various conflicts I believe sort of enhances or warrants continuation of efforts to mitigate and hopefully deal with successfully with the crisis that are that are still you know very much active in Africa the Middle East and you know these places where we have the most of our peacekeeping missions deployed thank you the next question is from Francis O'Donnell and Francis O'Donnell is a retired UN senior official and he has just returned from the ninth global Baku forum and his question is can you please share with us the state of play on negotiations between the Secretary-General and Martin Griffiths et al on relieving the Russian blockade at Odessa can a peacekeeping operation be envisaged for an escort and has article 51 on collective defense been considered for a naval escort by a coalition of the willing in the case of Russian if in the case that Russian continues to obstruct the grain export yeah well you know I'm afraid I won't be able to to provide more detail much details on these negotiations because it's very much an ongoing process and also one on which as you would recall I mean the the Secretary-General has indicated that you know the the it was probably more prudent to be discreet as to exactly you know what is discussed but it is clear that those discussions are ongoing that you know they're quite active the press reported on you know possibility of meeting between Russia, Ukraine, Turkey and the United Nations sometime soon but I don't have more elements on this clearly the importance of finding a solution for the exports of grain as well as to the exports of of fertilizers is is critically important and you know we're already seeing in in many of the countries in which we are deployed quite a significant impact resulting from this crisis that comes on top of various other crisis now again on the specifics I think it's it it would be very much you know speculative from me to sort of elaborate because nobody knows exactly what the contours what the sort of the modalities of these mechanism would be you all noted that they were of course concerned about the existence of mines but at the same time those mines you know and so including the sea mines are also seen as you know defensive by Ukraine so they're all kind of a question of them also inspections and whether they would be and who would be inspecting and monitoring and so on so forth so these are the issues that are discussed but I I'm not really able to provide more details on this sort of very very active process but I I have to say that it is critically important that this result in in a successful outcome and particularly as you know responsible for peacekeeping operations and with most of our peacekeeping operation deployed in countries where the impact of the current crisis is is is very very significant and potentially very dangerous thank you the next question is coming from Audrey McCready and she would like if you could spend a little time expanding on the role of the female peacekeeper and how they are employed right well we as I indicated and we we're making a lot of efforts to have more women peacekeeping and I think for a number of reasons one of them is that in the end you know the UN is about gender equality so we want peacekeeping to reflect that priorities and also we do believe that peacekeeping operations should be reflective of the gender balance of our world and and and and reflective of the the gender balance of our communities in which we operate but in addition to that we're also convinced that with more women peacekeeping we are becoming more effective in many ways and one of them but not the only one is in terms of our capacity to build trust with communities because peacekeeping is very much about engaging communities particularly with vulnerable communities and sometimes very often actually it's very much about women and children and and traumatized women and children who are not particularly keen to see more men with weapons and therefore we see that you know with women you know being with us and being in a position to engage with these communities we're much better at building trust and therefore being more effective but that's not the only reason also frankly I mean we we are convinced and we see that there's no function peacekeeping that cannot be either carried out carried out either by men or women but we also see that whenever we have more women in peacekeeping then we have a better work environment and also the environment that is less conducive to issues related to conduct and discipline including sexual exploitation and abuse now even as the proportion of women peacekeeping is improving I believe we have more to do and and and there are a couple of things first I mentioned the fact that we don't have enough women in military form units and that's because of the resource that is still not sufficient we would like to have more female genitals in peacekeeping actually we have more than before including Major General O'Brien from Ireland who is the Deputy Milad here and we have a couple of Forest Commander, Deputy Forest Commander but we don't have enough and the resource is still limited now the other thing we need to do is to go beyond the numbers and also look at what we could do to make peacekeeping more welcoming for women and here there are a number of things we need to work on one of them is the facilities I mean the sort of practical infrastructure of peacekeeping that need to be adapted so that women can be you know can feel as comfortable as men in our camps and bases the other thing is making sure that with more training and more sensitization we convince everyone to have the right attitude when it comes to making the work environment welcoming to women and frankly also to men because I don't believe that the work environment that is not welcoming to men can to women can really be a healthy work environment even for for men so there still is a lot that needs to be done and we count on the support of our member state as well to go forward and further on this unfortunately we have run out of time so it remains for me to thank you but to tell you that I have left a large number of questions behind I have been unable so that your presentation has been hugely popular with our members I'd like to thank you very much for taking the time to give us this presentation and the update on peacekeeping and to all of the other contributors my apologies for not getting to your questions and to all of you online thank you for joining us thank you thank you very much and pleasure with mine thank you