 Under Secretary General Hervé Latsous is one of the most senior people that we've hosted. He's been head of the Department of Peacekeeping Operations at the UN since 2011. He has a very distinguished previous diplomatic career joining the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1971, has served in a whole range of places before ending up his deputy perm rep to the UN in New York, served as French ambassador to the OSCE and had senior positions at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Paris. And then he also was chief of staff for the French Minister for Foreign and European Affairs. Has the interesting distinction of holding a degree in law and a diploma in Chinese and Malay-Indonesian at the National School of Oriental Studies in France. But today the focus is on UN work and the peacekeeping, the vast array of responsibility that that represents. We're very delighted to have very senior members from the Department of Foreign Affairs and from the Defence Forces here with us and a whole variety, if I could introduce you to everybody I would, but a whole variety of people from a wide range of spectrum of Irish life. So we're all waiting with great interest to hear what you want to say. Thank you very much. Good afternoon to everyone and let me first thank very warmly the Institute of International and European Affairs for hosting me and having such a large gathering and indeed the Secretary-General retains very good memories of his passing here and asks me to convey his greetings. I'm very happy about this opportunity to speak about the role of United Nations peacekeeping especially here in the capital of a country which has been so committed over years and decades to being peacekeepers. You have done an incredible effort over many years in many circumstances. Right now you have very brave people in Golan Heights, in Lebanon. We had very interesting talks this morning with the Minister of Defence and with the Minister of Foreign Affairs. I think this is an appropriate place to tell you about how we see our work, what we're trying to do to both try and make a difference on the ground and also to keep pace with a world that has been changing so significantly in recent years. So thank you for providing that forum. I think as I said it's been 30 peacekeeping operations altogether in which Island has participated and it illustrates of course the commitment of your country to international values and to all the ideals that are those of the United Nations. It is illustrated also by the considerable help you have given to strengthening the relationship between United Nations and the European Union because if there is indeed a community of ideals and values it is between those two entities and I was just yesterday in the semester gathering of the Ministers of Defence of the European Union and there is considerable interaction. I think right now there are no less than 20 mission settings where we are working whether in peacekeeping or in political endeavors alongside and increasingly organically with the EU. So that I think is something to be saluted today and I'll just not to have more about it but I think that your military are playing a very critical role in those places the Golden Heights of Lebanon which are so vital to maintaining at least some islands of stability in the part of the world which is prone to so much disaster and I think everybody agrees that it is critical. As indeed you have placed a role in the past in Liberia, a mission that we are now I think going to close before long because it has done the job and I think this is something that has to be you have to be commended for. So one word still about European endeavors for the common security and defence policy I think what was debated yesterday in Bratislava of course is first is not for me to comment upon it wouldn't be proper and it's something very much in a making but I think we can expect that there will be further developments along the line and that indeed increased capability increased agility on the part of the European Union will allow us to register more successes like the one we had in Central African Republic only two years ago when the EU decided to go along with the bridging force which did from the UN point of view a perfect job perfect on substance, perfect in timing, perfect in coordination. So this is probably some way to go and I know that your country will continue to encourage that. In the context also where we just had three weeks ago a ministerial meeting hosted by the UK which was an opportunity for many countries from all over the world but especially from Europe and that included Ireland to pledge yet for the capacity for UN peacekeeping. I think this is absolutely critical and an element of great hope for the future. So all this is important because I think we are at a turning point. As we look at the international peace and security landscape in 2016 we see that UN missions increasingly are deployed earlier, much earlier in the span of a conflict. Places where fighting more often than not is still going on and that was the case only three years ago in Central African Republic. In some cases we have to do our work so as to protect civilians and to maintain stability in environments which are completely unpredictable. Examples are Sudan today, nothing can happen, anything can happen tomorrow. Resumption of fighting on a massive scale, ethnically based with enormous violence. I am among those who believe that South Sudan already accounted for 60,000, 70,000 people killed, tens of thousands of women raped, at least 20,000 kids recruited by young groups and this can resume tomorrow because the leaders don't care and there is no political process emerging yet we are there dealing with this on a sort of hand to mouth basis with 200,000 civilians and there is no mistake, we had to do that, we took them on in our camps on our bases but it is a severe weight on our people, it is a severe constraint on what we can do elsewhere because we simply have to protect those people that the government considers as its enemies or quasi-soldiers who just need to go and dig out their weapons from wherever they are hidden in the bush nearby to resume hostilities. So very complex situation and there is no tidy I would say continuum from conflict to peace, it is a continuum, there's no question but when does each situation start or cease to exist is complex and in certain places it's true that we are ourselves fighting to support peace. The tools that we have more often than not have been stretched to the limit, there are no longer a match to the new patterns of violence when we see that every other day in Mali almost we blow we have a vehicle blowing on a mine on an IED despite all that we have invested in training, in equipment, in technology in general, well touching wood there's maybe a hope that it does less victims but the number of incidents has rather in fact increased. So this is a huge challenge because it impacts on us and needless to say it impacts also on the populations that we are supposed to protect. So this is why two years ago we embarked on the so called reviews of peace operations but alongside a review on the peace building architecture and alongside a review of the implementation of Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security. This was I think an opportunity, a great one to try and come up with ideas, proposals to adapt our tools to address those conflict more effectively. It shows clearly where we are, sort of snapshot reality check but also a pointer towards what it is and how it is that we could do better. So I would like today to focus on two areas which I think are of particular relevance in your country. One is the protection of civilians and the other one is women, peace and security. As you know for 15 years now or there about the Security Council has made protection of civilians the core of all our contemporary mandates. It's really the heart of the mission. It is the benchmark rightly or wrongly by which our efficiency, our effectiveness is judged. It is probably the most high profile activity of our peacekeepers and yet we are I think at some crossroads on protection. We have made a lot of progress in conceptualizing, in designing policy tools, strategy in the field, in headquarters. But at the end you know it is more often than not a matter of life of death. I said in South Sudan if we hadn't opened our camps to those 200,000 civilians most of the people would be dead by now. So there's no going back on that. But how to manage the net result is an incredible challenge. I was in the north of South Sudan in the United States in June before the incidents resumed. Terrible violence resumed in July. We were seeing a situation in Ben-Chu where very gradually some people were returning home or hinting that they might return home. But in Malacal no such thing because near Malacal the other side of the Nile you have another community called the Shiluks with a rather nasty general called Oloni who was trying to or hinting that he was preparing an attack. So no way anybody wanted to move out. So what do we do? And there was a government of South Sudan official with me said well you might start by handing out some seeds and so they can plant vegetables. I said but no we don't want to give them any encouragement to stay further you know. We have to make it clear that protection is a necessity. But there's a point where you know people have to consider returning home to their place and to forego what it is that they get in camps which is not negligible. They get medical services. They get food distribution. They get schooling for the kids. But that's not sustainable. So it's really a conundrum. So what it is that we have to do you know to address such challenges. First I think we have to build a much stronger consensus among the member states on what the expectations are in this area and about the will to protect civilians. There are things that are expected and there has to be clarity. But there has to be clarity also about the use of force. What are we ready to do you know to actually implement that mandates. Because if we ask the countries and the commanders of the force to put the lives of the troops on the line then the council has to be clear about what it is that it requests. What it is that the consequences that it is ready to live up to the council. And of course the two contributors have to be clear as to the extent to which they are ready to do the job. I've been fighting a constant fight to get rid of caveats. Caveats are not in the logic of peacekeeping mandates but they are even worse when the existence of a national caveat appears during an operation when commanding officer of a unit refuses the order of the force commander calls his capital so whomever and says no I will not do it you know and that is something we simply cannot accept. So all these aspects the role of the council of the contributing countries of other actors I think there is a need for a new sort of framework of cooperation amongst the partnership that is peacekeeping. Second issue has to do with communication you know clearly you will never be able to have a peacekeeper behind every civilian on a given theater. So we cannot be a tool that can deal effectively to deter and contain very large scale and sometimes unfortunately state sanctions violence but we need also to be clear with the local populations that they cannot expect everything from us they can expect a lot but of course the primary responsibility lies with a whole state and the whole state has to be made fully aware of what the consequences will be for it if it fails to do what it is expected to do again something to clarify between the security council in particular and the secretariat. That of course has to do with capabilities we need adequate tools civilian and military uniformed to do the tasks which means a very realistic assessment of a threat of the ability to adapt or to re-adapt. There of course it brings to mind the fact that the civilian component of our mission is absolutely essential. We have civil affairs officers. We have of course the role of the police that is essential. We have all the specialized advisers on women, on children, on sexual and gender based violence. All this means that we have to be permanently in a position to adapt and to be able to face all these issues. And there of course we need further investment by the member states because in particular in the civilian field I mean we dealt with the military pledges in the peacekeeping summit last year the London ministerial three weeks ago but also we need more pledges in the civilian field and I think Ireland has committed. Other countries I think it's good that we mobilize the best tools possible. All this of course with the constant concern to ensure the best level of performance and conduct. Also we should never forget that peacekeeping operation is not an end in itself. It's a tool. It's a tool towards implementing a political process, a political solution. If there is no viable political strategy then it's a bit pointless you know. It's costly, it's costly in human lives, it's costly in money, it's costly in political capital but at the end of the day we need to have a process you know that will show the way and benchmark possibly what is happening. And even when there is extreme violence there has to be some prospect and this to come back to South Sudan which is a bit of an obsession with me these days. You know I knew nothing about the Sudan until I joined the UN five years ago. France ceased to be interested in the Sudan in I think 1898 when Colonel Marchand was halted in his progress by Lord Kitchener in a place called Fashoda. I flew over it by the way. So no for a French it was terror incognito but the more I go to that country the more I invest time and efforts in it the more shocked I am and in South Sudan clearly there is no political process. I think it's an impossible situation yet we have to keep trying to forge a political agreement to have a way out. So this really is a matter of redoubling effort with the strong support of in particular the European Union and your country can do a lot I think leading by example drawing on your historic experience you know the courage the determination the constant trying I think that forces admiration and it gives you maybe more credibility than other countries who had a less complex history if I could say well for you to consider you know the second issue I would like to mention sorry for being a bit long is women peace and security. I think we have made important steps in the implementation of the agenda since 1325 adopted it's clear that women has to play the rightful role that should be they should be at the core of collective security in post-conflict countries. The London Ministerial Summit was very much insisting on that angle and well I think the message was made there yet again that peace is more lasting when the voices of women are heard and are most importantly acted upon. So it's been incumbent on us to develop robust structures to integrate deeply you know the gender issues in the framework of peace and security to develop policy guidance also accountability mechanisms and I think we've made some progress. We have now gender advisors in every head of missions office in all missions. We have developed women politicians network just to give a few examples but clearly it remains a challenge in many places and there is still much to continue to do and doing really the mainstreaming of gender at all levels will still require many efforts. I mentioned it accountability is the key. Leadership has a role to play and I means me including you know from at every level of the organizations we need to engage yet further in work plans in compact and it's not easy. My predecessor at the head of DPKO rather maybe foolishly signed a commitment you know that before 2015 we would have 20% women in UN police at the time we were at 10. Well today I'm still bound by that commitment but we're still barely at 12 so I failed on compact you know but it's a matter also of dealing with a sociology of world police forces where some are quite advanced in a percentage of women they have on board some are way behind and can we be expected to do much much better than national police forces. There is a real question there. So we have this forward looking strategy on gender that also insists very much on the needs for further partnerships in particular with the civil society. We have a number of mechanisms not go into them in detail but let me say again this is a matter of priority high priority. So of course I could have talked to you about technology about the need to develop an intelligence policy which to my mind is something absolutely essential and critical for the future of our operations but I thought these two issues were something that needed particular insistence but we can only do that with the support of member states of partner organizations of course as I said including the European Union the support of your country Ireland will remain very critical but of course we need to continue looking ahead. We have to do a better job on a day to day basis but we also have to think about what is it that peacekeeping might look like five or ten years from now and what we see today is already maybe a prefiguration of that when we see the problem of dash. I've made it very clear in my tenure and that has been endorsed by the membership that peacekeeping is not and will not be and cannot be a tool for anti-terrorism. We have never been designed from that we are not equipped for that we will never find the troops or the police to do that job. So what's the solution coalition of the willing intervention of a parallel operation like the French against the jihadists in Mali maybe various possibilities but I think there is going to be for the new secretary general and his team a need to you know reflect about those future dimensions and finding the proper way ahead. And this of course again while implementing the reforms accepted by the membership at the end of the HIPPO and other reviews last year. So all views are welcome forward looking we have to be just no doubt but at the same time knowing the limits of what it is that we can do. The example I give always one of the three basic principles of peacekeeping is the need only to fire to your weapon to defend yourself or the mandate. But what do you do when you have a front of view bunch of guys from the Ugandan rebels ADF in Northern Kivu who rape and kill every other night whole villages and they threaten you know of course you have to shoot you have to be robust. So the lines are moving the problem is to know to what extent and to what point and at what point perhaps a change in the tooling will be necessary but that will be for our successors of course to consider in due course. But in the meantime thank you very much for the opportunity. Thank you for being so numerous and thank you again Ireland very much for your splendid contribution to our efforts over so many years and we look forward to continuing that.