Recent events in the border region of Kashmir between India and Pakistan have brought long-running anxiety about the potential for conflict back into sharp focus. Almost twenty years ago, then-United …

Today, February 28, 2019, is the 100th birthday of Sir Brian Urquhart, whose distinguished career at the United Nations began at its creation and lasted until the final years of the Cold War. As an ad…

Today is the International Day of Peace, sometimes unofficially known as World Peace Day. The United Nations General Assembly declared it a day devoted to strengthening the ideals of peace, both withi…

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres launched the “Action for Peacekeeping” (A4P) initiative during the open debate on peacekeeping reform on March 28, 2018, at which he called for a “quantum leap in co…

United Nations peacekeeping has survived many crises throughout its history, but none has provoked such distinctive disgrace as peacekeepers committing sexual violence against those they are meant to …

Adama Barrow was sworn in as the new president of The Gambia on January 19 this year. The ceremony was held in the Gambian embassy in Dakar, the capital of neighboring Senegal. Soon afterwards, the Un…

On December 21 last year, the United Nations Security Council extended the mandate of the peacekeeping operation in Liberia (UNMIL) and set its end date as March 30, 2018. The Council hailed the missi…

If reported plans come to fruition, China heading up the United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) would represent one of its most significant overtures toward leading, rather than m…

As the war in Syria enters its sixth year, a new report published in February by the Syrian Center for Policy Research offered new calculations for death tolls from the conflict: a staggering 470,000 …

Recent anti-UN protests have fueled concerns that some UN peacekeeping operations are facing a “crisis of legitimacy” among host-state populations. Without local legitimacy, there are questions ab…