THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Vice President
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
September 26, 2014
Joint Statement on Support for United Nations Peacekeeping Operations
We, the governments of Bangladesh, Brazil, Chile, China, Colombia, Croatia, Egypt, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Indonesia, Ireland, Japan, Latvia, Mongolia, Nepal, Netherlands, Norway, Pakistan, Rwanda, Serbia, Spain, Sweden, Tanzania, Uruguay, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Vietnam, reaffirm our support for United Nations peacekeeping operations at a time when they are more critical than ever to international peace and security, and yet also under historic stress.
We applaud the bravery of the men and women serving in UN peacekeeping operations, who face increasingly complex and dangerous environments; and we honor those who have made the supreme sacrifice. We note that UN peacekeeping operations have taken on increasingly significant and challenging roles in response to contemporary threats to international peace and security, and we pledge to assist the United Nations in mobilizing the support that these operations require to achieve their important mandates.
We commend the progress in recent years to make UN peacekeeping operations more effective and efficient, but note that critical reforms are still needed to further strengthen peacekeeping operations to meet evolving security threats and challenges. To this end, we support the Secretary-General’s strategic review, and underscore our commitment to ensure that UN peacekeeping operations have the funding, forces, equipment, training, and capabilities they need. We also affirm the vital roles of the UN General Assembly, including the C34, and the Security Council in reviewing recommendations of the review and deciding on implementation as appropriate.
Through our current contributions to peacekeeping operations and the announcements of new support we have each pledged today, our governments demonstrate our enduring commitment to strengthening UN peacekeeping operations. We call on other UN member states and the rest of the international community to join us and demonstrate similar support by announcing new commitments to UN peacekeeping operations, recognizing that different countries may contribute in different ways, that such support could take a variety of forms, and that a number of member states already contribute in significant ways. Our governments commit to reconvene in one year on the margins of the United Nations General Assembly in September 2015, to assess the progress made and the challenges remaining, and to catalyze additional commitments to support UN peacekeeping operations.
###
