UN chief eyes reforms to peacekeeping operations
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
The UN Security Council ended the decade-old Minusma mission in Mali a few weeks ago at the request of the military junta.
PHOTO: AFP
Follow topic:
NEW YORK – United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on Thursday for a “serious, broad-based reflection” on reforming the global body’s peacekeeping operations, highlighting persistent “limitations” to their success.
Presenting his most recent policy brief, titled New Agenda For Peace, Mr Guterres praised the work of UN peacekeeping missions as “saving millions of lives” and preserving ceasefires.
However, the former Portuguese prime minister cited “longstanding unresolved conflicts, driven by complex domestic, geopolitical and transnational factors” as well as a “persistent mismatch between mandates and resources” as exposing the missions’ limitations.
“Peacekeeping operations cannot succeed when there is no peace to keep,” he said.
They also cannot achieve their goals “without clear, prioritised and realistic mandates from the Security Council, centred on political solutions”, he added.
He therefore called for a “serious, broad-based reflection on the future of United Nations peacekeeping operations, with a view to moving towards nimble, adaptable models with appropriate exit strategies in place”.
Though he did not mention any nations by name, his remarks come just weeks after the UN Security Council ended the decade-old Minusma mission in Mali.
The move followed a surprise withdrawal request from the West African country’s military junta, which said the mission had failed to meet the security challenges caused by terrorist groups.
Peacekeeping missions are not anti-terrorism forces and are limited by their mandates in how they can engage in conflicts.
A “fragmentation of conflicts” involving “non-state armed groups, criminal gangs, terrorists and opportunists” has increased the need for “multinational peace enforcement, counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency operations” backed by regional or sub-regional groups, Mr Guterres said.
He pointed to Africa as the continent with the greatest need for this “new generation of peace enforcement missions”.
“The New Agenda for Peace therefore reiterates my call for peace enforcement missions and counter-terrorism operations, led by African partners with a UN Security Council mandate,” he added.
The New Agenda for Peace is part of a series of proposals the Secretary-General is producing ahead of the UN’s major Summit of the Future in 2024. AFP
