Hundreds of civil society activists will gather at the United Nations in New York next week to launch a new international movement to prevent armed conflict. The meeting will also call on governments to work more closely, and consistently, with civil society at the international regional and local levels.
Keynote speakers will include President Gusmao of East Timor, Nobel Peace Prize-winner Jodi Williams, and UN Under-Secretary General for Political Affairs Ibrahim A. Gambari. The conference will feature over 30 working groups daily, and numerous side events.
The conference represents the culmination of a three-year process that began in 2002 when UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged civil society to meet and define its position on conflict prevention.
Other conference speakers include:
• Ambassador Jan Eliasson, Ambassador and former Permanent Representative of Sweden to the United Nations, and President-elect of the UN general Assembly
• UN Humanitarian Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland, and
• Civil society leaders from 15 regions such as Emanuel Bombande of the West Africa Network for Peacebuilding (Ghana/Nigeria), Tatjana Popovic, Nansen Dialogue Network (Serbia) and Augusto N.Miclat Jr., Initiatives for International Dialog (Philippines).
Seeking to generate political will behind conflict prevention, the focus of the conference is to encourage governments and international organizations to work more closely with civil society. There will also be discussion of many of the reforms proposed in the recent document “In Greater Freedom,” including a new peace-building commission at the UN. The meeting will take place one month before a major meeting of the UN General Assembly, which will review progress towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals, and also review sweeping proposals to restructure the UN system.
The conference is organized by the Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict (GPPAC), the first global network of peacebuilders, in partnership with the United Nations Department of Political Affairs. GPPAC is organized into 15 regions, each of which is led by a leading NGO, or “regional focal point.” The 15 regions have all organized meetings and drawn up an action plan that reflects the priorities of their region. These have been drawn together into a single agenda, which will be launched next week in New York. A Global Action Agenda will be presented during the Opening Plenary on Tuesday, July 19. The full agenda of the 3-day conference is available at http://www.global-conference.net.
