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Ammon News - Jordan's Permanent Representative to the United Nations, HRH Prince Zeid bin Ra’ad, has sent to the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon a "Discussion Paper" titled "War, its lessons, and the search for a permanent peace".

The paper will be distributed during the UN session scheduled to be held on January 29 as one of the UN documents.

In his paper, Prince Zaid said that the UN was established after World War II to prevent the outbreak of another world war, and also contributed to the march of humanity towards saving the successive generations from the scourge of war. The word "war" here has a broader meaning as it also denotes internal war which, too, affects international peace and security .

During the past decades, the paper pointed out, the UN sent peacekeepers and specialists to deal with the logistics, the physical needs of war ravaged or destroyed countries, but the major achievements of the UN were ensuring peace and security as well as reconciliation among ex-combatants, offering mediation, providing police training and helping in infrastructure reconstruction.

The paper focuses on ways in which the UN body can help forge a deeper reconciliation among ex-combatants and their peoples, based on an agreed or shared narrative and a shared memory of a troubled past.

The concept paper also recognizes that one key component of any conflict is the conflicting narratives of the warring sides. It seeks out examples of "meaningful reconciliation based on shared historical understanding helping to cement lasting peace." But historical memory must be based on a determination of the truth, a truth that has been properly determined, understood and agreed to by the formerly warring sides,it added.

To make this process possible, the Jordanian presidency of the Security Council is inviting delegations to reflect on positive examples and the lessons that can be learned from these examples. "How might these lessons be drawn upon to models of best practices that can be applied in existing and future post-conflict situations?" the paper asks.

Also, the concept paper proposes that the Security Council should consider mandating "a small UN historical advisory team" which would help to gather and recover relevant documents and assist in the "early work of setting up a ‘functional’ national archive, or even a historical commission" in post conflict situations.

*Petra