RESDAL Joins UN Common Connections Week on SSR & Governance

RESDAL joined global thought leaders at the opening of the UN Annual CommonConnections Week on Security Sector Reform & Governance 2025, held at United Nations Headquarters on June 2, 2025. 

With contributions from Sir Paul Collier and Professor Mayke Kaag, the event explored pathways to institutional resilience and security. Representing RESDAL, Dolores Bermeo reaffirmed the network’s ongoing commitment to ensuring that Global South perspectives shape the evolving global security agenda.

RESDAL (Latin American Security and Defence Network) participated in the opening event of the UN CommonConnections Week on Security Sector Reform & Governance 2025, held at UN Headquarters in New York on June 2, 2025. 

The event — "Security Disregarded is Development Denied: A New Economics of Security" — was organized by the Security Sector Reform & Governance Unit of DPO-OROLSI, with the support of the Group of Friends on SSR. It marked the start of a week dedicated to advancing reflection and dialogue on the role of security governance in achieving sustainable peace and development.

Renowned economist and Oxford professor Sir Paul Collier, author of The Bottom Billion and Left Behind: A New Economics of Neglected Places, delivered a keynote address highlighting the importance of strengthening national institutions that are essential to people’s security — particularly in contexts marked by fragility and neglect. 

The event also featured insights from Professor Mayke Kaag, expert in the Anthropology of Politics and Governance in Africa and of Islam in Africa and its Diaspora, at Leiden University and the University of Amsterdam. Kaag emphasized the importance of localized, inclusive approaches to building institutional resilience. 

Dolores Bermeo, attending on behalf of RESDAL. This participation is part of RESDAL’s ongoing efforts to ensure that Latin American and broader Global South perspectives are represented in the evolving international conversations around security sector reform, governance, and peacebuilding.