Foreign Desk Report
NEW YORK: UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has warned that the coronavirus pandemic not only threatens hard-won development gains in fighting global poverty and building peace but risks exacerbating existing conflicts and generating new ones. “The concept of sustaining peace is essentially about positive peace as opposed to simply ending wars.
In other words, it is the idea that the international community accompanies a country well beyond the point of simply putting down guns, to the point where people feel protected and represented”, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the Security Council Wednesday on the challenges to achieving sustainable peace, while pandemics ravage communities worldwide.
Against the backdrop of growing questions over the effectiveness of health systems and trust in institutions and governance across the globe, he said: “All of this means that our commitment to sustaining peace is more urgent than ever”.
The UN chief maintained that coherent, conflict-sensitive approaches to health and humanitarian crises will help deliver sustainable peace.
However, he highlighted three challenges, beginning with the erosion of public trust, which Guterres said can lead to widespread disillusionment in authority at all levels.
