Ladies and Gentlemen, Friends,

I welcome you all to our inaugural meeting of the EastWest Institute’s International Task Force on Preventive Diplomacy. My special welcome goes to our distinguished guests, Ambassadors Luc Teirlinck and Friedrich Daeuble from the Belgian and German Foreign Ministries respectively, as well as to Leland Russell, President of GEO Group Strategic Services and, last but not least, to John Mroz, President and CEO of the EastWest Institute. The fact that we get together today is also due to his dedication and vision: our Task Force is an example of how he and the Institute have taken our modus operandi global after our successful work in Eastern and South Eastern Europe.

Unfortunately, we are missing three members today, due to longstanding conflicting committments: Jan Egeland, Special Adviser to the UN-Secretary –General on matters relating to the Prevention and Resolution of Conflict, Gernot Erler, Minister of State, Federal ForeignOffice, and Ali Tabatabaee, Director, Division of International Organizations Studies, Center for Strategic Research, Tehran.

I am grateful for the support of the Belgian Foreign Ministry and Ambassador Teirlinck personally for their generous offer to host us today at the prestigious Palais d’Egmont here in Brussels. A big thank you also to the German and Swiss governments who, inter alia, fund this project.

Preventive Diplomacy, Ladies and Gentlemen, has become an imperative for the international community: prevention of conflicts, stability and peace is a moral imperative, an economic necessity, a humanitarian must and a political obligation. Preventive diplomacy is difficult, but it is possible. And it is timely: Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan Lebanon show there are no military solutions to conflicts. A good timing for us to focus on conflict prevention and preventive diplomacy.

As to the character of the Task Force and to its goals I refer to the background information one-pager in your folders. As to the composition of our group we have tried to preserve a geographic and institutional balance between international organizations, government representatives, the private sector, NGO,s ,and the academic world. As far as gender is concerned, unfortunately, we could not fulfill the provisions of Res. 1325. But I am happy to at least welcome two women in our male –dominated midst.

The new threats like climate change, terrorism, pandemics have become global. These are problems that don’t need visa to put pressure on decision makers. Our group’s composition reflects today’s global dimension of risks and conflicts. It’s a new and innovative format in that it fosters a truly global flow of information, a truly global participation, and a truly global attempt to influence decision making in matters conflict prevention, stability and peace. We are the long overdue institutional answer to the new conflict structure of the international system. We will help create the culture of prevention, called for by Kofi Annan.

There are too few groups like ours where substantive and issues based cooperation between people from around the world takes place. And where representatives from politics and business, civil society and academia come together and jointly develop policy strategies with a view to move forward the debate on central global policy challenges .I am convinced it needs more groups like ours to contribute to solving global problems.

We have come together as individuals, not as representatives from our respective organizations. Or, for that matter, as representatives from industrialized and developing countries, rich or poor. So our work will not get caught in political or ideological battles along those lines. It seems to me, there is no comparable group existing elsewhere. We are diverse not only geographically, but also in terms of the particular skills and experiences that we bring to this group. We will work together, network across institutions and continents, share knowledge and experience, learn from each other and lead an action oriented dialogue on issues that have a bearing on stability and peace. We are unique as agents and actors of change.

As to the sustainability of our group, several points are vital:
-That we own it,
-That we develop a corporate identity
-That we as members have a personal commitment to its goals and act accordingly (direct advocacy, involvement of local stakeholders as valuable tools to the TF)
-That we have a practical and concrete political impact.
-That the results of our work are policy relevant, at least meet basic policy needs.
-That we agree on clear priorities and concentrate on issues where we can make a difference.
-That we have both a sense of focus ,determination and a vision that is realizable in the mid –term
-And that our commitment is a long-term one, as required by conflict prevention.
So we must be prepared to make decisions today about the group’s strategic direction and actionable measures.

We must move beyond academic theorizing into the realm of influencing decision-making processes. Our work must not remain analytical and descriptive. We must operationalize it for political action. Therefore, the results we produce must be visible, real, tangible, and measurable. Only then will we make a difference.

We must find answers to the questions: how can we better advocate the cause of conflict prevention, stability and peace? How do we create a lobby for ourselves? How and through which venues can we reach out to decision makers with our policy recommendations? In what forums should we publicly advocate our cause?

To be successful, we need to devise a clear PR- concept and a strategy that renders the goal of making conflict prevention a reality. For this we need the necessary publicity through targeting the right audience and presenting the international community with clear “selling points”. We also need a rationale for the necessity of solidly institutionalized conflict prevention structures. For this to achieve we will utilize your, the Task Force’s members championship, and we have EWI’s great network at our disposal

To make it clear at the very beginning: to involve our group in specific conflicts runs the risk of people confusing conflict management with conflict prevention. It is not our ambition to engage in solving actual conflicts, but to raise awareness with the broader public and key-decision makers. We are not part of or integrated into the chains of command /reporting lines dealing with individual conflicts, i.e. we are not the core of a” Conflict Issues group”. We are rather:
-Advisers, promoters, initiators, and watch dogs that
-Monitor and assess international preventive diplomacy and cooperation
-Elaborate and market ideas/proposals for improvement
-Ensure the link between all relevant players(government, Parliaments, academics, NGO’s business)
-Initiate pilot projects to prepare the ground for new steps, for ex in the field of institution building, but also in motivating to act and mobilize political responses to the implications of concrete cross-border issues for stability and peace, like climate change, water, health, demography and migration.

The personal dimension of any effort to prevent violent conflict is essential. If a sufficient number of key actors and their constituencies of stakeholders decide to change and go for options the situation will change. Therefore, we need to seek methods and levers of change in the minds and expectations of individuals in order to make a breakthrough.

We face nothing less than the challenge of rooting new thinking on conflict prevention and security in government agencies and societies as a whole, and translating it into practice. We must make the moral and political case that today conflicts must be prevented, not fought.

I don’t know whether we will manage to do something qualitatively new; at least we should strive for doing something qualitatively better. We must find an answer to the question what concrete results should we realistically expect to achieve in the early stages of our work? We all must recognize, however, the limitations of what we try to achieve. Only then will success and progress be judged against a realistic standard.

In this sense, ladies and gentlemen, I count on your support, your determination, your vision, and I wish this timely and innovative group of ours a good start and many productive results.