Grußwort von OKR'in Katrin Hatzinger zur Veranstaltung: Vorstellung des Friedensgutachtens 2023 in Brüssel

Members of Parliament,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Distinguished speakers,

Dear guests,

I am very happy to welcome you to this year´s edition of the presentation of the peace report 2023- the joint yearbook of the four leading German institutes for peace and conflict research.  Thank you very much for showing up in so high numbers. 

I am very glad that we organize this event again together with the Friedrich-Ebert-Foundation. A big thank you to Christiane Kesper and Sidonie Wetzing for the excellent cooperation and to Sidonie especially for taking on the task as a moderator.

Last year we focussed on the war in Ukraine which is unfortunately going on, this year we want to focus on the role of peacebuilding in times of multiple crisis and unfortunately the horrible events in the Near East underline that the title of this year´s peace report “still a long way from peace” proved to be quite clairvoyant.

Humanitarian aid, development cooperation and peacebuildings are important corner stones of building resilience in societies. But in these times of geopolitical turmoil they also have to face many challenges and there is the risk that without reform resilience becomes a hollow concept.

Therefore, we want to look at best practices but also at lessons learnt from the past. In this context I would like to briefly allude to a study recently published in Germany by the GKKE, the joint conference of church and development which is an ecumenical, protestant-catholic working group on development policy.

The study called “Honesty is of paramount importance” evaluates the german mission in Afghanistan. It is based on hearings and insights of experts from academia, diplomacy, NGOs, ministeries and Afghans themselves.

Three of the key findings are the following and might provide a bit food for thought.

Firstly: Don´t aim too high. In Afghanistan comparatively little has been achieved with a lot of money in development cooperation. Under the conditions of a failed state development cooperation can only make a difference if it follows a bottom up approach with modest, context-sensitive goals and based on societal ownership.

Secondly: Don´t underestimate the religious factor. In Afghanistan there was a lack of knowledge and differentiation of the religious-ethnic context. “A sound knowledge of the religious, cultural and historical background of a country and a comprehensive understanding of the conflict are fundamental prerequisites for the success of an operation on the ground – both military and civilian.”

Thirdly: Be honest about your interest, talk about things that don´t work out as planned and communicate and evaluate constantly and coherenty across departments, also in a civil-military context.

Some of these findings resonate with the content of this year´s peace report and its recommendations to policy makers.

I am delighted that we managed to gather here a quite prominent panel which will be able to give us valuable insights.

Looking forward to the debate I now hand over to Christiane Kesper.