Interpeace co-led a series of engagements with partners at this year’s UN General Assembly (UNGA). These were linked to Interpeace’s work on a UN-civil society dialogue on peacebuilding, on the ongoing evolution of the Youth, Peace and Security agenda and of course on Peace Finance. Our joint event with the African Development Bank (AfDB) and other partners including the Government of Mozambique can be watched here.
For more on the side events we organised, see here:
As many readers would know, this year’s UNGA was billed as one of the most important of recent years – organised in the wider context of global tumult for peace and security – but also because it concluded the flagship Summit of the Future and the adoption of the Pact for the Future Outcome Document. The Pact for the Future process sought to reinvigorate the UN and multilateral system and provide a roadmap for a series of reforms across a broad range of themes from peace and security, climate change, the SDGs, the international financial system, culture, governance and even technology and outer space.
While many had hoped for more ambitious reforms to global governance from this process, the Pact does significantly advance progress in how international financial institutions (IFIs) can better support humanitarian and peacebuilding challenges, in a number of ways.
Much of this builds on the UN Secretary General’s call in the New Agenda for Peace for “IFIs to become agents of peace”. Here are some important highlights from the Pact:
- Action 44 calls for the strengthening of the Peacebuilding Commission and explicitly calls for much more ‘systematic and strategic’ partnerships between the Commission and IFIs to strengthen peacebuilding processes and mobilise financing for national development and new ‘national prevention plans’. This is the beginning of a more formal political and administrative architecture for IFIs like the World Bank, IFC and regional development banks such as the AfDB to directly support peacebuilding and prevention objectives.
- Action 49 calls for accelerated reforms of the IFI architecture to better mobilise resources for countries and communities most in need. This action recognises the need for new incentive structures, concessional models and explicitly calls for ‘design, financing and scaling up of country owned and driven innovative financial mechanisms’ which is a core aspect of the Peace Finance approach. Peace Bond structures already under development by various Peace Finance partners are tangible examples of the types of innovative financial structures that IFIs can support.
- Action 51 calls on countries to re-channel over USD100 billion of Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) to developing countries to help them deal with macroeconomic shocks which are often a cause and consequence of conflict. This is an important and concrete enabling reform that will lower risks in fragile, low-income countries and support wider adoption of Peace Finance approaches and peace-positive investments.
- Action 52 calls on IFIs to better support developing countries on climate finance. Key to this action is recognition that IFIs need to ‘to improve the assessment and management of risks… support steps to address the high cost of capital for developing countries and provide policy support to help better manage and reduce risks.’ This calls for greater adoption of what is an important aspect of the Peace Finance approach. Peace Finance and the Peace Finance Impact Framework utilise a more intentional approach to risk reduction by directly mitigating social and political risks linked to peace.
- Finally, Action 53 builds on previous calls for developing more sophisticated measures of progress on development that go beyond GDP. For the first time, this explicitly requires IFIs to adopt measures of progress beyond GDP, important policy rationale for wider adoption of impact frameworks like the Peace Finance Impact Framework. This can support greater adoption of the framework which aims to benchmark important aspects of peace impact for public and private investors, such as social cohesion, trust in the state and between people and in levels of security and safety as a consequence of investments.
While previous UN General Assembly resolutions have recognised the role IFIs play in supporting post-conflict countries and especially reconstruction (i.e. Resolution 69/313 (2015), Resolution 70/192 (2015), Resolution 75/215 (2020), for instance), they have tended to do so indirectly and in somewhat vague terms. While there is a danger that some of the pact’s concrete and positive directions for IFI reform get buried amongst the plethora of other priorities and commitments, this is, nonetheless, significant progress and policy ‘tailwind’ for the growing Peace Finance ecosystem. Interpeace looks forward to the many opportunities to implement and carry forward these positive directions and recommendations with partners.
