On January 1, 2019, a far-reaching reform of the UN development system went into effect. This was referred to by the deputy secretary-general as “the most ambitious reform of the United Nations development system in decades.” While this reform has only briefly been in place, questions have already arisen about its implementation and implications.This issue […]
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Papua New Guinea is facing two major challenges to peace: a November referendum on the future political status of Bougainville, the site of a brutal conflict from 1989 to 1998; and the recent increase in intercommunal violence in the Highlands region. This makes it an important test case for the UN’s approach to peacebuilding and […]
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UN peace operations are going through an accelerated period of reconfiguration and drawdown. Between June 2017 and March 2018, long-standing peacekeeping missions in Côte d’Ivoire and Liberia closed, while the mission in Haiti was reconfigured into a transitional peacekeeping mission. Looking ahead, the Security Council has mandated the closure of the peacekeeping mission in Darfur […]
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The reforms to the UN development system, effective on January 1, 2019, marked the start of a new period for the UN presence in Liberia, making it one of the earliest test cases of a “next generation” UN country team. This comes less than a year after two other transitions: the withdrawal of the UN […]
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Comprehensive leadership training is necessary to ensure that peace operations are effective and that senior leaders are prepared for both the daily challenges and the inevitable crises of peacekeeping. A gender perspective is of central importance to such training. However, gender considerations—from gendered conflict analysis to recognition of who is in the room when decisions […]
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From 2003 to 2018, the UN Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) was ever-present throughout the country. The peacekeeping mission’s work, and its transition out of the country, are considered positive examples of how the UN can support countries through conflict and post-conflict phases. Nevertheless, UNMIL’s transition offers many lessons that member states, UN officials, and international […]
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In recent years, there have been increasing calls to ensure local ownership of peacebuilding design and practice, to take local knowledge fully into account in designing peacebuilding programs and assessing conflicts, and to strive for the meaningful participation of local peacebuilding actors. In the search for new approaches to connect local-level initiatives to international programs and […]
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Prevention is generally viewed as a crisis management tool to address the destructive dynamics of conflict. The sustaining peace agenda challenges this traditional understanding of preventive action by shifting the starting point of analysis to what is still working in society—the positive aspects of resilience—and building on these.The goal of this volume is to build […]
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In December 2016 Gambians took to the polls and successfully replaced longtime president Yahya Jammeh with current President Adama Barrow, ushering in a political transition. More than a year into this transition, the country is at a tipping point. Public expectations remain high, and the list of competing priorities, from increasing economic opportunities to implementing […]
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The UN is increasingly deploying peacekeepers to conflict theaters where there is no political agreement and little or no peace to keep. Such high-risk environments make it harder for the UN to keep its personnel safe, fit, and healthy. While current UN missions have adopted a number of measures to mitigate these dangers, these do […]
Read moreThe European Union is capable of decreasing its dependence on Russia, but also of weakening the Kremlin’s ability to wield energy as a weapon…
The UN counterterrorism architecture was written broadly though its application has been largely focused on…
Last week, at least 15 people died in protests demanding UN peacekeepers leave the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The week before, the military junta ruling Mali halted troop rotations for the UN mission there and ejected the…
Member states agreed to an overall increase in the peacekeeping budget for the first time in…
Looking at green water, the rainwater available to plants, shows that freshwater’s ability to sustain a stable Earth system is even more threatened than…
The UN Security Council does not have the luxury of choosing between normative imperatives associated with preventing…
Despite the instability it faces, Guinea-Bissau—alongside countries like Madagascar, Chad, or the…
There are a number of reasons why it is difficult for…
Without a corresponding political process, UN protection activities are an ineffective bandaid in situations of…
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The International Peace Institute is an independent, international not-for-profit think tank with a staff representing more than 20 nationalities, located in New York across from United Nations headquarters. IPI is dedicated to promoting the prevention and resolution of conflicts between and within states by strengthening international peace and security institutions. To achieve its purpose, IPI employs a mix of policy research, convening, publishing and outreach.
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