On March 19, 2023, and at the invitation of Ambassador Dr. Mohamed Anis Salem, Rapporteur of ECFA’s Permanent Committee on the United Nations, ECFA held a meeting, in which it hosted Ambassador Dr. Mohamed Idris, former Permanent Representative of Egypt to the United Nations in New York, and member of the Advisory Group to the Secretary-General of the United Nations for the Peacebuilding Fund, to speak about “the vision of the Secretary-General of the United Nations, António Guterres, on the New Agenda for Peace and his efforts to crystallize it,” which is the agenda that the Secretary-General had presented on the commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the establishment of the United Nations, in 2020, under the slogan “Our Common Agenda.” A number of ECFA members participated in the meeting, including Ambassadors Ezzat Saad, ECFA Director, Mohamed Anis Salem, Mohamed Tawfiq, Mohamed El-Ashmawy, and Dr. Sadeq Abdel-Aal.
Ambassador Idris indicated that the New Agenda for Peace represents a revival of the peace agenda put forward by the former United Nations Secretary-General, Dr. Boutros Boutros-Ghali in 1992, but international circumstances changed – for the worse – to a large extent; as the geopolitical differences between the major powers have severely increased, as have the challenges related to the repercussions of the Covid-19 pandemic, terrorism, extremism, wars, conflicts, cyber competition, nuclear proliferation, climate change, and ways to achieve sustainable development…etc.
The Secretary-General’s report in this regard entitled “Our Common Plan: Addressing Current and Future Challenges” was issued in September 2021; in which he affirmed that international cooperation is more needed than ever but also harder to achieve. Hence, the report addressed the requirements needed to strengthen international cooperation during this century, to address the challenges mentioned previously, while emphasizing that this cooperation should be comprehensive and multi-faceted, and not limited to the security dimension only, and that it should address the root causes associated with these challenges and difficulties, without being merely limited to its symptoms.
