In Hindsight: The 2025 Peacebuilding Review
At the end of January, member states began the formal phase of the UN Peacebuilding Architecture Review (PBAR), a process undertaken every five years to strengthen and refine UN peacebuilding efforts worldwide. To kick-start its engagement in this phase, the Security Council, at Algeria’s initiative, adopted a presidential statement on 27 January, reaffirming its commitment to the process.
Algeria proposed an initial draft of the statement on 15 January. The Council last adopted a PBAR presidential statement in 2015. Some members cautioned that negotiating a statement too early in the process could undercut the broad consensus needed to pass General Assembly and Security Council resolutions by year-end. To avoid this, members opted for a concise text and deferred more contentious issues—explored in the ‘formal phase’ section—for later discussions.
The statement encourages greater coherence in peacebuilding efforts and emphasises the need to strengthen the performance and impact of the peacebuilding architecture. It also welcomes annual consultative meetings between the African Union Peace and Security Council and the Peacebuilding Commission (PBC) while stressing the importance of partnership between the UN and the African Union (AU), consistent with Chapter VIII of the UN Charter.
The 2025 PBAR in Context
Called for in resolutions 75/201 and 2558 (2020), this is the fourth review since the General Assembly and the Security Council established the three components of the peacebuilding architecture in 2005: the PBC, an intergovernmental advisory body; the Secretary-General’s Peacebuilding Fund (PBF), a financial mechanism of first resort to sustain peace in situations at-risk; and the Peacebuilding Support Office (PBSO), now integrated into the Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs (DPPA). PBSO is responsible for managing the PBF, supporting the PBC’s work, and ensuring synergies across the UN system’s peacebuilding work.
The fourth review comes at a time of significant geopolitical divisions and escalating risk of conflict in many parts of the world, underscoring the urgent need to act on recommendations from current and past reviews. Among member states, there is growing consensus that this review should prioritise advancing implementation over reiterating priorities.
The first review in 2010 (A/RES/65/7, S/RES/1947) emphasised improving operational effectiveness, resource mobilisation, and UN system integration. The 2015 review (A/RES/70/262, S/RES/2282) marked a pivotal shift with its emphasis on the concept of “sustaining peace,” which reframed peacebuilding as a proactive, inclusive, and integrated process aimed at preventing conflict, addressing root causes, and ensuring coherence across the UN’s development, security, and human rights pillars. The 2020 review (A/RES/75/201, S/RES/2558) was widely regarded as a rollover exercise, reinforcing the principles and priorities of 2015 while addressing emerging challenges such as the COVID-19 pandemic, emphasising the need to involve the entire UN system in effective strategic planning, and reiterating the need for sustained financing and strengthened partnerships.
According to the terms of reference that the President of the General Assembly and the President of the Security Council circulated to all member states on 16 April 2024, the informal phase in 2024 would gather inputs through consultations and assessments, while the formal phase in 2025 would focus on intergovernmental negotiations to generate recommendations for adoption by the General Assembly and the Security Council by the end of the year.

2024 Informal Phase Highlights
The informal phase consisted of three tracks: (a) PBC meetings to assess progress; (b) reflections from independent eminent persons whom the Secretary-General selected based on current or past membership to relevant senior advisory boards and groups; and (c) perspectives gathered during thematic and regional consultations organised by member states, regional organisations, think tanks, and civil society across various regions.
In its letter to the General Assembly and the Security Council summarising the outcome of its meetings, the PBC highlighted the importance of national ownership, inclusive participation of women and youth, partnerships with financial institutions, leveraging regional cooperation, and enhancing coherence across UN bodies. The role of youth and education in peacebuilding was highlighted as an undervalued area requiring greater attention. It was recognised as both a fundamental right and a vital tool for conflict prevention and rebuilding trust. Drawing lessons from its flexible support for peacebuilding in The Gambia, the PBC identified the importance of respecting national needs, building institutional capacities, and ensuring adequate financial resources as key to its successful engagement and proposed that they should serve as the foundation for strengthening the architecture.
In their letter to the Secretary-General, which he subsequently shared with the General Assembly and the Security Council, the eminent persons pointed to implementation gaps in past recommendations and urged the review to prioritise actionable steps, including scaling sustainable financing, deepening inclusive participation, and strengthening the PBC as a global platform for prevention and impact.
The thematic and regional consultations offered diverse and valuable perspectives to strengthen peacebuilding efforts and tackle critical global challenges, including forced displacement, urbanisation, and the climate-conflict nexus. These consultations emphasised the importance of human rights, good governance, and sustainable financing as foundational pillars for peace while calling for specific actions such as empowering youth and women in leadership roles, implementing security sector reforms, integrating humanitarian and peacebuilding approaches to address displacement, and safeguarding civic space to enable inclusive participation. They also underscored the need to advance global technological governance, both to counter misinformation and hate speech and harness technology’s potential for societal transformation.
These consultations have added to an already substantial volume of recommendations accumulated over successive reviews. This growing repository of inputs—ranging from insightful, actionable proposals to broader, more conceptual ideas—has made prioritisation a significant challenge. The Center on International Cooperation at New York University organised input to the 2020 PBAR into a matrix, helping to categorise and highlight actionable priorities. No such systematic methodology was applied for the 2025 PBAR, leaving the new influx of recommendations harder to process and integrate effectively.
The Secretary-General’s report on peacebuilding and sustaining peace drew on input from the three tracks of the informal phase. While the methodology of distilling from the flood of input is not explicitly outlined, his report remains a practical starting point. Among the key recommendations:
- Urging member states to embrace nationally-owned prevention and peacebuilding strategies as a universal priority. These should be anchored in human rights and backed by the UN system.
- Emphasising the critical role of women in peacebuilding, calling for at least 15% of ODA to conflict-affected countries to advance gender equality, with 1% allocated specifically to women’s organisations.
- Pressing member states to reinvigorate voluntary funding to UN entities working on peacebuilding and the sustainable development goals, including ensuring adequate resources for resident coordinators’ offices and sustained funding during post-mission transitions.
- Highlighting the need for adequate resources for the PBC, commensurate with the expansion of its scope and geographical focus, including the establishment of a dedicated conference facility.
- Urging broader voluntary contributions to the PBF and raising assessed funding to $100 million per year as requested in his report (A/72/707-S/2018/43), as well as reallocating unspent peacekeeping funds to the PBF.
- Calling for the strengthening of the Peacebuilding Impact Hub to improve access to and use of disaggregated data, fostering greater accountability across the UN system in achieving effective implementation and measurable results.
The Formal Phase
For the formal stage of the review, two co-facilitators—Egypt for the General Assembly and Slovenia for the Security Council—have been appointed to conduct intergovernmental consultations. These consultations aim to produce agreed recommendations for consideration and decision by the General Assembly and the Security Council. Member states are expected to begin negotiating the text of the twin General Assembly and Security Council resolutions in March or April, with adoption planned between October and December 2025.
A number of contentious issues are expected to come up during the negotiations, each requiring constructive solutions to ensure progress in peacebuilding efforts.
First, the concept of national ownership remains a point of divergence. Some member states emphasise sovereignty, viewing it as a principle to safeguard against external interference in domestic affairs. Others advocate for national ownership as a means to ensure inclusive and participatory peacebuilding, with greater involvement of women, youth, civil society, and other “agents of change”. Bridging these interpretations requires constructive dialogue, trust-building, and a shared commitment to balancing sovereignty with inclusive, locally driven approaches to peacebuilding.
Second, financing for peacebuilding remains a pressing concern. The General Assembly, through resolution A/RES/78/257 adopted on 22 December 2023, approved $50 million per year in assessed contributions to the PBF starting in 2025, providing more predictable and sustained support. However, demand for the Fund continues to outstrip its resources. While some advocate for increasing both assessed and voluntary contributions, others insist that voluntary funding should remain the primary source, opposing any increase in assessed contributions. Beyond the PBF, the Secretary-General’s report serves as a call to commit more resources to both UN and non-UN peacebuilding efforts, framing peacebuilding not as a cost but as a necessary investment for global stability and development. During the PBAR negotiations, member states must reconcile differing views on burden-sharing and prioritisation of peacebuilding within increasingly constrained budgets. To seek common ground, member states could shift the focus of discussions from sources of funding to proof of impact, based on disaggregated and independently verifiable data, for all UN peacebuilding activities.
Third, the role of the PBC in conflict prevention remains contentious, particularly when it involves sensitive issues such as human rights and climate, peace and security. While some member states have proposed initiatives like joint meetings between the PBC and the Human Rights Council, others remain wary of overreach and potential interference with sovereignty. Though the Pact for the Future, adopted in September 2024, draws on the 2016 resolutions that enhanced the PBC’s preventive mandate, debate over its interpretation continues. Negotiations can benefit from focusing on examples where the PBC has supported nationally identified priorities, such as climate, peace and security initiatives in the Pacific Islands and the Sahel or transitional justice and human rights efforts in The Gambia. These examples provide valuable guidance for shaping future action, demonstrating how seemingly contentious issues can gain broad support when grounded in nationally owned and led strategies and initiatives.
Fourth, identifying agreed priorities and tracking progress on their implementation can be a cumbersome process in view of the vast array of recommendations from the current and past reviews. This requires pulling together and assessing progress across diverse inputs, which requires dedicated capacity. Member states can support efforts to map this information, organising it into a structured framework of agreed priorities to make implementation a central focus of PBAR discussions. In terms of the PBC’s work, a focus on implementation could be achieved by shifting the debate from broad thematic priorities to practical ways of sustaining support for countries requesting assistance, including by enhancing coordination between the Chair and the new Vice-Chairs to meet the needs of PBC’s expanded scope and conducting regular assessments of its impact on the ground. By making implementation a key focus, member states can maximise the PBC’s impact, foster stronger collaboration, and build trust in the peacebuilding process.
The 2025 Peacebuilding Architecture Review offers member states the opportunity to demonstrate that their commitments are more than just words on paper. It is a chance to turn promises into tangible action and show that the ideals of peacebuilding can be realised through the hard work of implementation. As input from the informal phase highlights, this requires strengthened mechanisms to track progress, enhanced collaboration across national, regional, and global levels, and the mobilisation of sustainable and predictable financing. By placing implementation and impact at the heart of this review, member states can ensure that the Peacebuilding Architecture has a real chance to fulfil its promise of supporting lasting peace.