The Imperative To Cooperate: A call for peace
Video Description
Lakhdar Brahimi, Veteran UN Envoy and advisor, and former foreign minister to Algeria, speaks at the Skoll World Forum 2010 opening plenary. His talk, called “The Imperative to Cooperate: a Call for Peace,” focuses on his life in conflict and his work in South Africa, Haiti, Sudan, Iraq and Lebanon. “What I have learned in these 20 years in trying to make peace is …that you come across a lot of courage and forgiveness…” He also talks about clinching a ceasefire in 1989 in the Lebanese civil war, and the symbolism of having an airplane land at the airport when it had been closed for more than three years.
Speakers
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Member; Veteran United Nations Envoy and Advisor, The Elders
Lakhdar Brahimi joined Algeria’s liberation struggle as a student and later served his country as an ambassador and Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1991 to 1993. In 1989 he brokered the Taif Agreement, which ended Lebanon’s civil war. He has represented the United Nations around the world, including in South Africa, Iraq and Afghanistan. Widely respected as a ‘diplomatic troubleshooter’, he also chaired an independent panel in 2000 to review United Nations peacekeeping operations; the resulting ‘Brahimi Report’ made ground-breaking recommendations for change. He served as the Joint Special Representative of the United Nations and the League of Arab States for Syria from 2012-14. Lakhdar Brahimi is a member of The Elders, a group of global leaders brought together by Nelson Mandela in 2007.
