On 17 May 2024, Switzerland organised an informal meeting of the UN Security Council that focused on strengthening the interplay between science and the work of the Security Council. To this end, it brought speakers from two key Swiss scientific institutions, GESDA and ETH, to New York. ‘The Security Council has a mandate to deal with the many crises that are shaking the world. But even in these difficult times, it is crucial that we take a longer-term view,’ said Thomas Gürber, Deputy State Secretary of the FDFA, addressing the Security Council. The number of conflicts in the world is increasing and the challenges to peace and security in the world are becoming ever more complex. The consequences of climate change are exacerbating existing risks, new technologies are having a profound impact on our societies and disinformation is threatening trust between states.
The meeting, organised by Switzerland, aimed to gather perspectives on how the Security Council could strengthen its interaction with the scientific community to put evidence-based knowledge at the service of peace and security. Science has the potential to strengthen trust between states. ‘Trust is based on mutual understanding, but also on reliable facts and knowledge. Scientific actors have the tools and experience to produce reliable knowledge,’ emphasised Thomas Gürber in New York. The Security Council needs to act decisively on the basis of scientific findings in order to understand, anticipate and address risks to peace and security.
To ensure this in concrete terms, Switzerland is already promoting dialogue between UN member states and the academic world, for example, in order to better understand specific risk multipliers for conflicts such as climate change in certain operational contexts of UN peacekeeping missions. In doing so, it can draw on its experience from the Swiss ‘Blue Peace’ initiative, in which it combines sound knowledge with political dialogue to promote regional and cross-border cooperation on the peaceful management of limited water resources. Switzerland's long-term goal is a UN that works with the latest tools and methods based on data and scientific knowledge. This harbours great potential for better supporting the work of the Security Council and UN peacekeeping missions on the ground.
