For decades, the world has looked to the United Nations to help settle armed hostility. The ambition to save humanity from the “scourge of war” is, after all, identified in the first line of the UN Charter.

Increasingly, however, the nature of violent conflict has shifted, moving from wars fought by states over resources or political ideology to fighting by non-state actors driven by poverty, inequality or extremism.

“The time when the UN could put two people in a room and mediate a peace agreement is far gone,” said Henk-Jan Brinkman, Chief of the Policy, Planning and Application Branch in the UN Peacebuilding Support Office. “In Syria alone, there are 80 non-state groups. How do you put them in in the same room? How do you negotiate?”

Mr. Brinkman’s remarks came at a breakfast meeting, held on 25 February 2016 at the offices of the Baha’i International Community, on the topic “Sustaining Peace and Security through Agenda 2030.”

The gathering was the 32nd in a series of breakfasts on the post-2015 development agenda, now known as Agenda 2030, sponsored by BIC and International Movement ATD Fourth World. The aim of the meetings has been to create a space where diplomats, UN officials and civil society can freely discuss the new agenda in an informal atmosphere.

Mr. Brinkman said Agenda 2030, which was adopted by the UN in September 2015, directly addresses peace issues more than the previous development agenda, the Millennium Development Goals.

Overall, however, the Agenda does not lead to a new concept of peace so much as a “ new concept of development” that takes violent conflict into account, he said. “That is the fundamental change that is taking place.”

Mr. Brinkman noted that Agenda 2030 is comprised of 17 Sustainable Development Goals, which seek to address virtually every major challenge facing humanity today, from poverty and gender inequality to climate change and education.

The SDGs also address peace, he said – but not in such a way as to overlap the responsibility of the UN Security Council.

“There was a very clear negotiation strategy that ‘peace and security’ would not be part of the agenda. It became ‘peaceful, justice and inclusive societies,’ because there was a strong feeling on the part of some states to keep the development agenda out of the Security Council.”

Accordingly, he said, Goal 16 specifically calls on nations to “promote peaceful and inclusive societies,” with an emphasis on access to justice and building accountable institutions at all levels.

“But the factors that can drive violence are addressed throughout the SDGs,” said Mr. Brinkman. “You can find that in Goal 1, on poverty. You can find it in Goal 5, in the target on violence against women. And in Goal 8, about eradicating forced labor.

“And Goal 10, addressing inequality, is incredibly important in all of this,” he added. “A lot of wars are driven by inequalities among groups within a society.”

Sunaina Lowe, Coordination Officer for the Policy, Evaluation, and Training Division of the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations, joined Mr. Brinkman in making remarks to the meeting.

Ms. Lowe noted that UN Peacekeeping efforts had likewise evolved from a force inserted between warring states after negotiations to one that now often finds itself dealing with violent extremism by non-state actors that is “motivated by things beyond our understanding.”

In that regard, she said, she hopes that the nature of the SDGs, with their emphasis on “people-centered development,” might help to give voice to community-level actors, who can perhaps promote peace in some situations better than high level negotiators in these new situations.

The UN, she said, is “often working with the people who exert the power and forgetting or minimizing or ignoring what the people really want or are asking for.”

In introductory remarks, Serik Tokbolat, a representative of the BIC to the UN, offered this observation: “Agenda 2030 paints a much broader vision of peace. The SDGs make a very explicit connection between peace and development. Under the SDGs, peace is no longer viewed as simply the absence of violence, nor does peacebuilding only concern the eradication of violence.”

As with other breakfast meetings, the discussion that followed was off-the-record, using the Chatham House Rule. Notes of the substance of the meeting can be found here.