Mr. Achim Steiner, Director General of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), delivered a seminar on "Transition from War to Peace."
Mr. Steiner emphasized that the most important aspect is farsightedness and interest in the transitional period from war to peace, as it is necessary to understand that most conflicts have root causes, and these reasons are linked to the failure of development projects and development trends, and there is also an economic dimension in terms of people's interest in – and insistence on - development work.
There are many political crises and tensions that have not been successfully dealt with and later turned from crisis to armed conflict.
Regarding the last thirty or forty years, we viewed any intervention from the outside as humanitarian intervention, and this created a bipolar world of institutions.
We must get rid of the old pattern of thinking and work on rehabilitating collapsed institutions and buildings, and we must invest in development in order to achieve the required recovery and help in the process of transition from war to peace. As an example, we have worked in Iraq to rebuild the infrastructure at the request of the Iraqi government.