Abstract

As a key development of “Our Common Agenda”, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has published a policy brief on “A New Agenda for Peace”, calling mostly on member states to multilateralism and the creation of common agendas in order to face global challenges, like the mitigation and adaptation to climate change, the persistence of armed conflict and the spread of violence, including the lack of implementation of the Women, Peace and Security agenda since 2000.

This new framework shows, on the one hand, the limits that national sovereignty sets when it comes to multilateralism yet, on the other hand, it also offers important glimpses of productive, positive and impactful work the UN can do as part of larger peacebuilding efforts.

In this talk, Josefina Echavarría will provide some background to the New Agenda and, based on her experience in the field of monitoring of implementation of peace accords, provide some concrete examples in which the UN has been able to work as part of larger peacebuilding efforts. She will focus on the Colombian case, in which the University of Notre Dame is part of the International Verification Mechanism and, together with the UN Mission and in collaboration with civil society organizations, international partners and social movements, it has been possible to work with a joint agenda for peace accord implementation that - despite manifold challenges - includes an important agenda for the implementation of the WPS.

Biography

Dr. Josefina Echavarría Alvarez is Professor of the Practice and the director of the Peace Accords Matrix (PAM) program at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, part of the Keough School of Global Affairs. Josefina is also a faculty fellow of the Pulte Institute for Global Development and serves as a faculty advisor for the Afghanistan Program for Peace and Development program at the University of Notre Dame.

As the director of PAM, she leads the Barometer Initiative in Colombia, which carries out official monitoring of implementation of the 2016 Final Agreement between the government and the former FARC-EP. Josefina also directs the Legacy Project for “Preserving and Engaging the Digital Archive of the Colombian Truth Commission", which guarantees continued access to more than 200,000 files including audiovisual, non-textual knowledge and digitized documents compiled by the Colombian Truth Commission about the country’s 52-year armed conflict to advance transitional justice, human rights and the centrality of victims.

 

Joining instructions

The event will take place in person and there is no charge to attend. All welcome but please note that because if room capacity is reached, we may have to refuse entry.