Monitoring the Peacekeepers

The UN’s Special Committee on Peacekeeping has just released its 2020 report on the organization’s peacekeeping activities. The publication of the report itself is something of an achievement given the often fractious dynamics on the committee. Last year’s session produced so much discord that the committee did not release any substantive findings.

Disagreements have often, although not always, traced the fault line between the (mostly developing) countries that contribute forces to missions and those (mostly developed) states that fund UN peacekeeping. Currently, the largest contributors of personnel are Senegal, Rwanda, Egypt, Bangladesh, and Nepal. Meanwhile, the top funders are the United States, China, Japan, Germany, and the United Kingdom.

This year’s report touches on a range of sensitive issues, including allegations of sexual abuse by peacekeeping forces, the readiness and training of peacekeepers, mandates for missions, and how to respond to attacks on peacekeepers. Its analysis of these issues broke little new ground, but that may be less important than the common ground the committee members were able to find.