Addressing the High Level Dialogue on Building Sustainable Peace for All: Synergies between the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and Sustaining Peace, Qatar's Permanent Representative to the United Nations Ambassador Sheikha Alia Ahmed bint Seif al-Thani underlined that Qatar has made mediation and peaceful settlement of disputes a priority of its foreign policy.
She referred in this regard to the Doha-based Centre for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies which is the first of its kind in the Arab region.
The centre seeks to create an academic foundation capable of generating unique knowledge, and spreading the best practices in the field of conflict management and humanitarian action, and that will educate decision and policy makers in the Middle East and North Africa, to take the appropriate decisions in order to deal with the conflicts taking place in their countries.
The center also provides opportunities for higher education for researchers and practitioners of Humanitarian Affairs.
HE Ambassador Sheikha Alia underlined Qatar's belief in the close conjunction between the preservation of peace and sustainable development being the main factor for stability and prosperity.
Thus the development policies in Qatar focused on the sustainability of peace and development factors equally, and developed a comprehensive national strategy for development, in accordance with Qatar National Vision 2030, which had completed the first phase for the period 2011-2016, and will launch soon the second phase for the period 2017-2022.
Sheikha Alia stressed the need to build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions, as stipulated in the Goal 16 of the Sustainable Development Goals, if the international community wanted to be more effective in achieving the common endeavours of the establishment of peaceful societies and providing universal access to justice.
The ambassador warned that the current raging conflicts in different parts of the world, and the resulting cases of instability and migration, have become a fertile soil for growing terrorism and violent extremism, which emphasise the necessity to take more steps to preserve international peace and to promote the rule of law, and sustainable development, and respect human rights and fundamental freedoms.
The statement emphasised that the challenge that the international community faces today lies not only in the promotion of frameworks and tools to address the simultaneous crises facing the world, but also in the direct treatment of the factors contributing to extremism and violent terrorism, and thus establish a just and lasting peace and sustainable development.
