Peacebuilding Commission


The United Nations Peacebuilding Commission is a United Nations intergovernmental advisory body of both the General Assembly and the Security Council that supports peace efforts in conflict-affected countries. A key addition to the capacity of the international community in the broad peace agenda, it was established in 2005 with the passage of both A/RES/60/180 and S/RES/1645 Mr. Sérgio França Danese is the incumbent chair of the PBC.
The Peacebuilding Commission, which has a unique role to play in advancing intergovernmental coherence through its cross-pillar mandate, has already diversified its working methods to enhance its flexibility as a dedicated intergovernmental platform.
Recent good practices of the Peacebuilding Commission include attention to cross-border and regional issues in the Great Lakes region and the Sahel, support to the transition from a peace operation in Liberia and the adoption of a gender strategy that is the first of its kind for an intergovernmental body of the United Nations. Member States have also used the platform of the commission for constructive discussions on Burkina Faso, Colombia, Kyrgyzstan, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Somalia and Sri Lanka, at the initiative of the countries concerned.

Members

The commission is composed of 31 member states, which gather in two main fora: an Organizational Committee, and country-specific Configurations, one for each country that currently is part of the PBC's agenda.

Members

As of 2025, the current composition of the Peacebuilding Commission's Organizational Committee is as follows:
Selected by the Security CouncilSelected by the General AssemblySelected by the Economic and Social CouncilSelected due to contributions to UN missionsSelected due to contributions to the UN budgetAdditional partners
Algeria

Former members

Leadership

The leadership of the PBC is currently as follows:
  • Chair:
  • Vice-Chairs:,,, and

    Origins

The PBC is one of the new entities created by the reform process initiated during the 60th session of the General Assembly of the United Nations, as part of the 2005 World Summit Outcome. The debate over the reform of the United Nations systems is not a recent one. Since the creation of the organization, most delegates and commentators believed that the structure they had given birth to was a merely temporary one as a first step towards the establishment of the new multilateral system. Indeed, the third paragraph of article 109 is a clear clue of this initial orientation, as it states that a General Conference aimed at reviewing the UN Charter should be called from the tenth annual session of the General Assembly onward. But, the first attempt to reform the UN structure failed at the very 10th session, when the General Assembly, even though aware of the need for reform, decided to postpone any decision.
Various attempts to reform the UN took place over the decades but the core issues failed to be properly addressed.
The PBC was inaugurated in June 2006, with the inclusion of Burundi and Sierra Leona as the first cases of the commission, as previously requested by the Security Council, to develop a country-specific model aiming to contribute to the implementation of the post-conflict tasks in each of both countries.

High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change

The new environment and challenges brought by the post–September 11 system of international relations spurred the Secretary-General Kofi Annan to seek new proposals and solutions to reform a certain sensitive area of the UN system. This approximately was the mandate of the High-Level Threat Panel.
Annan announced the membership of the 16-member Panel in a letter, dated November 3, 2003, addressed to the President of the General Assembly, Julian Robert Hunte. Mr Anand Panyarachun, former Prime Minister of Thailand, was appointed to chair the high-level panel on global security threats and reform of the international system.
The Panel was asked to analyse and assess future threats to peace and security and to evaluate existing approaches, instruments and mechanisms, including the organs of the UN system.
In this view, the Panel was specifically asked to:
  • Examine today's global threats and provide an analysis of future challenges to international peace and security;
  • Identify the contribution that collective action can make in addressing these challenges;
  • Recommend the changes necessary to ensure effective collective action, including but not limited to a review of the principal organs of the United Nations.
The list above makes clear that the panel was not asked to formulate policies on specific issues. Rather it was asked to make an assessment of current challenges and to recommend proper changes to meet them effectively.
The final report of the High-level Panel, named "A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility," set out several recommendations to address problems and issues in six main areas of concern on which the multilateral system should concentrate its action now and in the decades ahead:
  1. war between States;
  2. violence within States ;
  3. poverty, infectious diseases and environmental degradation;
  4. nuclear, radiological, chemical and biological weapons;
  5. terrorism; and
  6. transnational organized crime.
Considering the second point, the analysis of the panel identified "a key institutional gap: there is no place in the United Nations system explicitly designed to avoid State collapse and the slide to war or to assist countries in their transition from war to peace". Since the United Nations should be able to act coherently and effectively from preventive action through post-conflict peace-building, the panel recommended establishing a Peacebuilding Commission as a subsidiary body of the Security Council itself.
As it is stated in the report, "the core functions of the Peacebuilding Commission should be to identify countries which are under stress and risk sliding towards State collapse; to organize, in partnership with the national Government, proactive assistance in preventing that process from developing further; to assist in the planning for transitions between conflict and post-conflict peacebuilding; and in particular to marshal and sustain the efforts of the international community in post-conflict peacebuilding over whatever period may be necessary".
For what concerns more practical and in-depth aspects of this new body, the panel just recommends that the commission should be reasonably small, meet in different configurations in order to consider both general policy issues and country-by-country situations and strategies, involving the main relevant actors in different fields and it should be assisted by Peacebuilding Support Office established in the Secretariat.

High-Level Threat Panel members

The High-Level Panel was integrated by 16 prominent politicians, diplomats and development experts:

Institutional Framework

The Peacebuilding Commission is a subsidiary organ of both the General Assembly and the Security Council, thus the legal basis for its institution is to be found in articles 22 and 29 of the UN Charter, devoted respectively to GA and SC subsidiary bodies.
In this regard, the Security Council adopted Resolution 1645 on December 20, 2005, in concurrence with an analogue act approved by the General Assembly, the 60/180 resolution of December 30, 2005. In both texts, the Peacebuilding Commission is described as an intergovernmental advisory body, and among its tasks, there is the duty to submit an annual report to the General Assembly which is supposed to hold an annual session to discuss it.
The main task of the new Peacebuilding Commission is that of taking care of post-conflict actions to be adopted and enforced in countries emerging from conflicts, whose Governments choose to ask for relief from the International Community.
It is up to the PBC to collect all available resources and funds directed to support recovery projects in those countries, and to draft long-term strategies in order to guarantee reconstruction, institution-building and sustainable development.
As said, this new body represents an innovation to the UN's traditional approach to conflict situations for the first time, there is a single organ charged with a mission that relies on a complex of capacities and expertise which used to be of many UN subjects' concern, without any substantial coordination set out.
For this reason, the commission can benefit from all the UN experience on such matters as conflict prevention, mediation, peacekeeping, respect for human rights, the rule of law, humanitarian assistance, reconstruction and long-term development.
Obviously, as it is an advisory body, its natural role is that of proposing action patterns to be followed by the countries involved in the peace-building operations, and it is not entitled to take effective action. Another important task the PBC is supposed to fulfill is of ensuring actual funding both for early reconstruction activities and for longer-term strategies. This last mission is aimed at fixing the previous general praxis, according to which Countries were often more disposable to engage themselves to offer resources for short-term interventions than to keep their promises of supporting peace-building operations once the conflict had been soothed and the hype on it had ceased to affect international public opinion.