Reviving Chapter VIII: The United Nations and Regional Organizations- Partners for Peace

BACKGROUND

For several years, the United Nations (UN) has worked to deepen its relationships with regional organizations in the interest of building partnerships that can better contend with evolving peace and security challenges. Until last year, this principally took the form of periodic consultations alongside ad hoc efforts to strengthen practical cooperation with particular regional organizations (ROs) in relation to specific conflict situations. In 2005, a series of new commitments were made to take the UN-RO relationship to a new level, including at the September World Summit, at the Sixth High-Level UN-RO meeting, and at the Security Council. Taken together, these commitments reinforce the trend toward greater reliance-or, at least, greater expectation of reliance-on regional mechanisms to address peace and security. They also underscore the importance of forging closer, more predictable ties between ROs and the UN based on appropriate divisions of labor and clear mutual expectations. Among the practical outcomes of the 2005 commitments were decisions to meet annually at the heads of organization level, establish a Standing Committee to initiate ideas and follow-up on decisions, and seek additional human resources to manage the process.