United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Peace Operations, Jean-Pierre Lacroix, addresses a critical issue in his Foreign Affairs opinion piece "Peacekeepers Need Peacemaker, What the UN and Its Members Owe the Blue Helmets." Mr. Lacroix emphasizes the vital role UN peacekeepers play in global security and stability, and calls for stronger support from member states. He argues that to meet the growing challenges of peacekeeping, the international community must commit to resources and political backing to ensure that peace operations are equipped to continue fulfilling their mission to protect and promote peace worldwide.
Peacekeeping missions are often criticized, but rarely do critics imagine what the world would be like in their absence. In fact, multiple studies have shown that peacekeeping missions are one of the most effective tools the UN Security Council has at its disposal to prevent the expansion of war, stop atrocities, and make it more likely that peace agreements endure. In a comprehensive 2021 meta-analysis of peacekeeping operations presented in this magazine, the political scientists Barbara F. Walter, Lise Morjé Howard, and V. Page Fortna found that “peacekeeping not only works at stopping conflicts but works better than anything else experts know,” and “at a very low cost. . . Conflict zones with peacekeeping missions produce less armed conflict and fewer deaths than zones without them.” The “relationship between peacekeeping and lower levels of violence is so consistent,” the authors concluded, that it ought to be considered “one of the most robust findings in international relations research.”
Today, however, the challenges facing UN Peacekeeping are greater than ever. Currently, the United Nations has 11 peacekeeping missions deployed around the globe—missions that are making extraordinary contributions to containing violence amid a surge in conflict worldwide. In the Golan Heights and Cyprus, peacekeepers are monitoring and preserving cease-fires. In the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and South Sudan, they are protecting the lives of hundreds of thousands of vulnerable civilians. In the context of escalating exchanges of fire between Israel and Lebanon following Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, the UN Peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon has worked to help avert escalations beyond those that have occurred throughout the ten-month conflict. Preserving cease-fires, protecting civilians, and containing violence are among the intermediate goals of peacekeeping, which also include mediating local conflicts and strengthening local institutions.
But the ultimate objectives of all peacekeeping operations are political. Such operations’ primary goal is to resolve conflicts by helping quarreling parties reach and implement the kind of agreements that help establish durable peace that outlasts the presence of peacekeepers. As the head of the UN’s peacekeeping efforts, however, I can attest that recent developments make it extremely challenging for UN Peacekeeping missions to accomplish these long-term goals. More and more, conflict is driven by armed groups that operate across national borders, weaponize cheap technologies such as improvised explosive devices, spew hate speech online, engage in terrorism and transnational organized crime, and often lack any political ambition beyond sparking disorder. Although the practice of peacekeeping must adapt to meet these daunting challenges, there is only so much peacekeeping can do on its own...
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