Archbishop Justin Welby joins new UN advisory board on mediation

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Archbishop Justin Welby (Photo: Lambeth Palace)

Archbishop Justin Welby (Photo: Lambeth Palace)

Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby has joined 17 other global leaders and experts on a new United Nations High Level Advisory Board on Mediation.

The board was established by António Guterres, nine months into his tenure as UN secretary-general. It is part of a “surge in diplomacy for peace” that Guterres has called for.

The new board “brings together an unparalleled range of experience, skills, knowledge and contacts,” the UN said, and “will provide the secretary-general with advice on mediation initiatives and back specific mediation efforts around the world.”

Guterres wants to strengthen the UN’s work in conflict prevention and mediation and the new board is expected to allow the UN “to work more effectively with regional organisations, non-governmental groups and others involved in mediation around the world,” the UN said.

Archbishop Justin Welby said that he was “honoured” to join the new board and was “praying for its contribution to global peace and reconciliation”.

  • Other members of the High-Level Advisory Board on Mediation are Chilean President Michelle Bachelet; Sri Lankan lawyer Radhika Coomaraswamy; the 2011 Nobel Peace Laureate Leymah Gbowee, from Liberia; former French diplomat Jean-Marie Guéhenno; former President of Finland Tarja Halonen; New Zealander David Harland, executive director of the Swiss-based Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue; Noeleen Heyzer, a trustees of the National University of Singapore; the former Deputy Prime Minister of Jordan, Nasser Judeh; former Algerian foreign affairs minister Ramtane Lamamra; Mozambique’s first education minister, Graça Machel; Asha-Rose Migiro, the High Commissioner of Tanzania to the United Kingdom; former Indonesia foreign minister Raden Mohammad Marty Muliana Natalegawa; former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo; former Kyrgyzstan President Roza Otunbayeva; former Haitian Prime Minister Michèle Pierre-Louis; former Timor-Leste Prime Minister José Manuel Ramos-Horta; and the former Guatemala foreign minister Gert Rosenthal. [ACNS]