Small States Can Take Small But Important Steps to Improve UN Peacekeeping

With its peacekeeping missions struggling to fulfil ambitious mandates in hostile environments, the United Nations urgently requires sustained action toward boosting performance and regaining global trust.
For this, the organization needs tangible support and engagement from its member states, including smaller states with specialized military capabilities, write LOUISE RIIS ANDERSEN and RICHARD GOWAN in a policy brief published by the Danish Institute for International Studies.
“Recent studies show that United Nations peace operations save lives and often offer better value for money than other multinational stabilization missions,” the authors state in the brief titled ‘Small States Can Take Small But Important Steps to Improve UN Peacekeeping’.
“At the same time, it is widely understood both inside and outside the UN that peacekeeping needs fundamental reform.”
The UN’s four main missions in Africa – in Mali, South Sudan, the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) – often lack the political capital and military heft to contain major violence and advance faltering peace processes.
Against this backdrop, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres launched his initiative ‘Action for Peacekeeping’ (A4P) in March 2018 as a plea for Member States to recommit to UN peacekeeping and help:
- refocus peacekeeping with realistic expectations
- make peace operations stronger and safer
- mobilize greater support for political solutions and for well-structured, well-equipped, well-trained forces.
While A4P presented no radical proposals about the future of UN peace operations, ANDERSEN and GOWAN state, it has turned out to be a useful framework for the UN secretariat in pursuing a range of reforms on issues such as assessing the performance of peacekeeping units and improving the safety of peacekeepers.
“Moreover, at a time when great-power rivalry and rifts in the Security Council are standing in the way of larger questions being addressed, A4P offers a useful set of openings for medium- and small-sized member states that are aiming to strengthen existing UN operations.”
Apart from providing troops and equipment, small states can assist the UN in 1) improving the conduct and discipline of peacekeepers; and 2) linking blue helmet operations to long-term efforts to ‘sustain peace’ in the countries where they serve. The UN has highlighted a need for more community liaison teams to address discipline problems, such as sexual abuse by peacekeepers, and member states could work with the secretariat to develop these.
A4P also highlights the need for member states to help ensure that ‘transitions from peacekeeping operations’ are successful. This entails working to ensure that peace is sustained after the peacekeeping operation has been withdrawn and the UN has reconfigured its engagements in the country. This is especially important in cases such as Sudan and the DRC, where such transitions are on the short- or medium-term horizon and where the UN military missions may be replaced by some form of special political mission or peacebuilding mission, the authors state.
Member states can assist the UN by increasing bilateral security assistance to the affected countries (by, for example, tailoring security-sector reform efforts to enhance the legitimacy of local authorities) and putting pressure on multilateral actors such as the World Bank to invest additional resources in peacebuilding.
“By bringing resources to bear in this way, even countries that do not deploy many peacekeepers can boost peacekeeping,” ANDERSEN and GOWAN state.