Panel discussion on the International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers

Mr. Attar-Bayrou
Distinguished Ambassadors and Panellists
Dear Members of the International Association of Soldiers
for Peace
Ladies and Gentlemen:

It is a great pleasure to open the panel discussion to mark the International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers. I am happy to welcome the Ambassadors of two leading troop-contributing countries – Italy, and Uruguay, Mr. Attar-Bayrou from the International Association of Soldiers for Peace and Mr. Husson, a distinguished representative of SWISSINT, the Swiss centre for peacekeeping operations. Thank you for being with us, and for your commitment and support to peacekeeping and our common efforts.

The theme of this year’s International Day of UN Peacekeepers is United Nations 70 and Peacekeeping: Past Present and Future. Since UNTSO, the first peacekeeping mission in 1948, we have deployed 71 peacekeeping missions with over 1 million women and men. Today, there are some 125,000 men and women actively serving in 16 peacekeeping missions on four continents.

Peacekeeping has evolved significantly over the past 67 years.

Today, Peacekeeping has evolved into one of the main tools used by the international community to manage complex multidimensional crises and new challenges faced by the peacekeepers.

The nature of peacekeeping is evolving. Missions are increasingly operating in non-permissive environments, where ongoing violence makes it more challenging for peacekeepers to do their job safely and effectively.

Missions are also increasingly deployed to places where there is no peace to keep and no peace agreement to support. This means that many missions must first attempt to end hostilities and providing protection to civilians, before focusing on long-term, sustainable peace. In the Central African Republic (MINUSCA), Mali (MINUSMA) and South Sudan (UNMISS), for example, it is difficult to identify the parties to the conflict and the line between combatants and civilians is blurred.

The nature of the missions has also evolved and UN peacekeeping has adapted to the new environment. The Ebola outbreak has led our mission in Liberia (UNMIL) to support the Host Government and its partners in managing the unprecedented crisis and eventually led to the creation of UNMEER.

In this evolving context, the Secretary-General initiated recently the Advisory Group of Experts on Review of Peacebuilding Architecture and the High-Level Independent Panel on Peace Operations. These two reviews will look at the dynamics of conflicts and the changing nature of peace operations and peacebuilding. Being the two sides of the same coin- peace operations and peace building go indeed hand in hand – it is positive that these two complementary reviews are being made at the same. Their respective recommendations and conclusions will be submitted over the next few months.

The Peace Operations Review and the Peacebuilding Review coincide with the Secretary-General’s Global Review on Security Council resolution 1325, which will contribute to shaping the vision of United Nations Peacekeeping agenda for women, peace and security in the years to come.

In addition, the Expert Panel on Technology and Innovation, convened in 2014, is to provide consideration of the immediate and long-term gains we stand to achieve with a more technologically-enabled and innovative approach to peacekeeping.

These reviews are pivotal. Their recommendations will shape the frame of tomorrow’s peace missions.

In the last years, Member States, host governments and local communities have placed high expectations on UN peacekeeping missions, with a particular focus on the protection of civilians. The Security Council has reacted to these expectations and has since 2011 included the protection of civilians in every peace mission mandate.

Protecting civilians demands capabilities and the willingness for uniformed peacekeepers to be constantly proactive and decisive in high-risk environments. Confronted with the scale of human suffering in many places peacekeepers are deployed to, the international community has a collective responsibility to respond better.

Let me reinforce two notions; One, it is the State’s responsibility to provide security for its population, and two, without the resolution to end the armed conflict itself, the objective of protecting civilians will be difficult to achieve. Unfortunately, the reality our peacekeepers are facing is different and complex, which brings me to the challenges the Blue Helmets are facing.

Challenges

Today, our peacekeepers face a number of challenges – I would like to touch upon three specific ones: The first challenge concerns the support to complex, political processes and the protection of civilians in high-risk environments characterized by asymmetric threats. While these asymmetric threats are not new to the UN, they are more intense. For example, although our UN missions don’t have a counter-terrorism mandate, the use of suicide bombers, improvised explosive devices and other tactics of irregular warfare threaten the security of peacekeepers and limit effectiveness.

The second major challenge is to ensure that peacekeepers are well trained and adequately equipped to address new threats and operate in increasingly difficult environments.
For example in the Democratic Republic of Congo, we are deploying an unarmed, unmanned aerial observation system. This will enable the peacekeepers in Congo to have real-time, first-hand information on conditions in remote areas, where combatants may threaten civilians.

The third challenge to peacekeeping is to maintain the commitment and unity of its constituencies. Successful peacekeeping demands sustained political and material support from the Security Council, from countries that contribute troops and police personnel and from those who contribute funds to our operations.
Although these challenges are known to the Member States, our peacekeepers are under-equipped and poorly trained to face the reality on the ground. Better troops and equipment are a must for peacekeeping missions for successfully fulfilling the mandates given by Member States. I would like to quote the SG’s appeal on these, in his remarks to the Chiefs of Defence Conference in March this year:

" When the Security Council calls on us to deploy peace-keepers, the United Nations needs to be ready. This means more diverse and more quickly available contributions from Member States. It also includes additional “boots on the ground” from developed countries with more technologically advanced militaries."

The "Ranking of Military and Police Contributions to the UN Operations" reflects the worry of the SG and underlines his appeal: the first Western country on this list ranks 26!!! This is not a sustainable situation for the future of peace missions.

These are some of the many questions on the future of United Nations Peacekeeping that I hope we will touch upon in today’s discussion.

Finally, let me say a few words about the small DPKO Office here in Geneva, which was strengthened last year. We value the enhanced presence of DPKO, through the UNMAS Office, in International Geneva, which allows us to capitalize to an even greater extent on the resident expertise and build on stronger partnerships with Geneva based organizations, active in the field.

Thank you again for being with us to mark the International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers – and welcome to the Palais des Nations.