The UN secretary-general on Friday began a sweeping review of the world body’s peacekeeping operations by naming a panel of experts with past ties to UN missions. It is the most comprehensive look at the 130,000-member peacekeeping staff in almost 15 years.
UN Undersecretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations Herve Ladsous said that operations are under the most severe strain since the UN was founded.
More than 100 peacekeepers have died this year and 45 were taken captive for two weeks by militants in the border area between Syria and Israel. Ebola is the latest threat.
At the same time, some of the UN’s 16 peacekeeping missions have been criticized for their lack of effectiveness and slow pace of deployment to crisis zones.
In May, the UN’s internal watchdog said peacekeepers responded immediately to a minority of attacks on civilians between 2010 and last year and almost never used force. Its report studied eight missions whose mandate included protecting civilians.
And this week, a UN review found that the 20,300-member UN-African Union joint force in Sudan’s Darfur region had been “unduly conservative” in sharing information about possible wrongdoing by Sudanese government or pro-government forces. The UN Security Council, concerned about the overall Darfur mission and its US$1.3 billion annual budget, ordered a review of it earlier this year.
Such findings, along with the growing dangers that peacekeepers face from terrorist groups, helped prompt the system-wide review.
In comments to a UN debate on peacekeeping on Friday, the US said that it can take more than a year for the UN, which relies on contributions from member states, to get some missions on the ground.
“It has been 10 months since the Security Council authorized an emergency increase in troops to stem the violence in South Sudan, and yet the mission is still not at full strength,” said David Pressman, alternate representative for special political affairs. In Mali, about 18 months after the UN took over from the African Union, the mission is at just 74 percent of its expected strength.
The review panel, led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate former East Timorese president Jose Ramos-Horta, is expected to present its recommendations next September.
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