Ladies and gentlemen of the media. Thank you very much for your presence.
I have no doubt that this first conference between the African Union Commission and the United Nations Secretariat represents a landmark in our cooperation.
We are indeed creating the conditions for an enhanced coordination of our activities at all levels. We share the vision that peace and security, inclusive and sustainable development, and human rights and good governance are dimensions that need to be seen together and that require a common vision and an enhanced cooperation between our two organizations.
I am very happy that we were able to sign a new framework that enhances our cooperation in peace and security. We are witnessing, in Africa, as around the world, changes in the security situation that force us to have a strategic review of the way peace operations take place. We no longer have only the traditional peacekeeping operations, where peacekeepers separate two countries or two groups within the same country that have signed an agreement, and a makeshift peace essentially prevails and only needs a certain level of stability.
We are witnessing situations where there is no peace to keep, where multiple elements are disturbing the situation with asymmetric forms of warfare. We see links with terrorist organizations, with criminal organizations also operating in the same areas, and this forces us to a strategic review of the way we do peace operations and to fully explore the complementarity and the interdependence of the African Union and the UN.
Operations like the operations of AMISOM (African Union Mission in Somalia), where the African Union is committed in Somalia, not only to preserve peace but to make sure that peace prevails, are operations that need to have much stronger support from the international community and need to have predictable funding -- namely, in my opinion, also through the possibility of assessed contributions.
There are a lot of new forms of cooperation that this present framework will allow and I am very happy that we were able to conclude it today.
On the other hand, we will align the Agenda 2063 of the African Union for sustainable development with our own Agenda 2030 and create conditions not only to work together but also to have common lines of reporting and to be able to avoid all forms of duplication and guarantee that we converge in the same objective: to make the Agenda 2030 and Agenda 2063 a success story in Africa – Africa, that, more than a continent in crisis, is a continent with enormous potential. There are lots of positive success stories that need to be fully in our own narrative as a UN about Africa and in our cooperation with the African Union.
I would also like to underline that in relation to human rights, to good governance, there was a total identity of points of view that will allow us to work together very strongly, not only in conflict resolution, not only in sustainable development, but also in prevention, in sustaining peace and in creating all the conditions for the African continent to be able to fully meet the aspirations of the African people, especially of the young African people that corresponds to the enormous potential that needs to be fulfilled.
https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/sg/speeches/2017-04-19/secretary-general%E2%80%99s-press-encounter-moussa-faki-mahamat-remarks