World powers are becoming increasingly reluctant to commit their forces to UN peacekeeping missions. As a result, others are stepping into the breach. Make peace between Israelis and the Arabs, solve the conflict between India and Pakistan — such were the visions were shared by many at the United Nations back in 1948. UN missions, they believed, could and would bring peace to the world’s conflict zones. It was in 1948, when the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO) started monitoring the ceasefire between Israel and its Arab neighbors, that the history of the blue helmet peacekeeping missions began – a history that has featured both successful missions and setbacks.
One year later and UNMOGIP, the United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan began its work mediating in the Kashmir dispute. The total number of missions with often cumbersome acronyms has in the meantime risen to 72. UNTSO und UNMOGIP are still ongoing, but neither of these UN missions has brought lasting peace. United Nations Security Council Resolution 242, passed on November 22, 1967, called for the exchange of land for peace. Since then, many of the attempts to establish peace in the region have referred to 242. The resolution was written in accordance with Chapter VI of the UN Charter, under which resolutions are recommendations, not orders.
Nearly 90,000 soldiers and police officers are currently taking part in UN peacekeeping deployments. That is a drop of around twenty thousand since 2015. Nearly 4,000 blue helmets have been killed during peacekeeping missionsFrom the mid-1990s, more and more regional alliances, including NATO, began to see it as their responsibility to bring about peace. It is a trend that continues today, SIPRI’s van der Lijn tells DW: “While there has been a steep decrease in the number taking part in peacekeeping missions, the numbers deployed in non-peacekeeping missions has actually risen – above all inanti-terror operations.”
The US is the only western country to put forward a sizeable contingent – mainly deployed in Resolute Support Mission (RSM) in Afghanistan. But US President Donald Trump is determined to further reduce troop numbers. Countries supplying peacekeeping troops are paid just under 1,600 US dollars per month per soldier. No surprise therefore that it is above all poorer nations that provide troop contingents.
Source: DW
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