The purposes of the United Nations, as set forth in the Charter, are to:
- Maintain international peace and security
- To develop friendly relations among nations
- To cooperate in solving international economic, social, cultural and humanitarian problems and in promoting respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms
- And to be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations in attaining these ends
The UN's Department for Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) is currently directing and supporting 18 peace operations across the globe, with more than 100,000 personnel from over 110 countries deployed on missions in mid 2007.
To support, manage and direct these missions, the DPKO, has approximately 600 staff at its Headquarters in New York. The workload has been steadily increasing and the upcoming highly complex African Union-United Nations Hybrid Operation in Darfur will create further challenges in planning, force generation, logistics, procurement and command and control.
Simply put the concentration of demands, and their coincidence, could stretch the capacities of the UN, and particularly DPKO, to its limits. Whilst it has experienced similar numbers of missions before, today’s are more complex with multiple military and civilian actors involved.
Since 1948 over 2405 people have given their lives on UN operations around the world. The UK currently contributes 302 military and 64 civilian police personnel to UN missions. On the military side, the majority of the contribution is to UNFICYP in Cyprus with smaller numbers of officers to other missions.
With an 8% share of the UN peacekeeping budget the UK represents the 4th largest contributor in financial terms. The UK also support to UN by providing high quality staff to the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, the newly established Department of Field Operations as well as field missions.
As the nature of conflict has changed, so the United Nations peacekeeping response has evolved from security focused tasks, primarily involving military troops, to multidimensional peacekeeping missions mandated to do both peacekeeping and peace building tasks, and involving a wide range of actors from the political/security, development and humanitarian communities.
A number of important reforms are taking place in accordance with the DPKO 2010 Reform agenda, to which both Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon and Under Secretary-General for DPKO Jean-Marie Guéhenno are committed.
Work is currently being undertaken on the implementation of Integrated Mission Planning Process (IMPP), which is one in which there is a shared vision among all UN actors as to the strategic objective of the UN presence at country level.
The reform also include the co-operation between UN and regional and sub-regional organisations such as EU, AU and NATO, a peacekeeping doctrine and more efficient management of personnel and resources.
Moreover, the UN's Peacebuilding Commission was established the 2005 UN World Summit. The Commission will be an advisory body. Its purpose will be to bring together international political, donor and military actors involved in peacebuilding activities in a given country in order to advise on strategic priorities for post-conflict stabilisation and recovery and, where relevant, highlight any gaps which threaten to undermine the peacebuilding process.
The real work of the Commission is expected to be in its country-specific committees where participation will be tailored to each case – to involve country representatives as well as all the relevant contributors such as regional organizations, regional banks and international financial institutions. The first two cases for the Commission are Sierra Leone and Burundi.
The UK was a driving force for UNSCR 1325 on Women, Peace and Security, adopted in October 2000. The Resolution recognises the disproportionate effect of conflict on women and underlines the essential role of women in prevention of conflict and as full participants in post-conflict peace-building and reconstruction. UNSCR 1325 tasks the UN and member states to ensure gender considerations are thoroughly integrated into all aspects of security work.
However, implementation of the Resolution has been slow. A report by the UN Secretary-General in 2004 requested member states to develop National Action Plans to implement UNSCR 1325. UK Ministers have launched a National Action Plan, in which MOD, FCO and DfID are the principal stakeholders. In accordance with the National Action Plan the MOD has, among other actions, conducted an audit of existing individual and pre-deployment training which concluded that British military personnel generally received sufficient training – mainly through the Law of Armed Conflict module - to ensure that they would be compliant with the intent of the Resolution.