On Tuesday Kassym-Jomart Tokayev of Kazakhstan, Director-General of the United Nations Office at Geneva and Personal Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General to the Conference on Disarmament, delivered the first lecture of the spring 2012 semester at the Graduate Institute.
 
In his presentation entitled “Conflict Prevention: Challenges and Opportunities for the United Nations”, Dr Tokayev said that Geneva is the ideal city to serve as a platform for conflict prevention because it hosts institutions and civil society actors that cover all dimensions of this field and is a traditional location for discrete talks critical for conflict prevention. He added that it has a unique convening power and is a leading international intellectual centre.
 
The Director-General also pointed out that the UN Secretary-General’s five year action plan includes the objective to focus more on conflict prevention. Priority targets he discussed from the plan were to strengthen existing institutions that collect data and the data collection-analysis-action link; to place more emphasis on supporting democracy building and transitions; and to advance disarmament at all levels.
 
Achim Wennmann, Executive Coordinator of the Geneva Peacebuilding Platform and Researcher at the Graduate Institute’s Centre on Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding said Dr Tokyaev’s remarks were significant because they are critical to the advancement of the role of International Geneva in the broader peacebuilding agenda. “Dr Tokayev’s lecture highlighted the fact that conflict prevention is a critical issue for International Geneva and the city’s assets give it a comparative advantage in this area”, he said.

The full text of the lecture is available on the UNOG website.