In the non-permissive environments where they are often deployed, UN peace operations need to be increasingly creative to implement their mandate to protect civilians. They face particularly acute challenges in contexts marked by violent extremism, such as Mali, where attacks by terrorist groups have greatly constrained the capacity of peacekeepers to protect local populations.This paper […]
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On October 26th, IPI together with the French Ministry of Armed Forces’ Directorate General for International Relations and Strategy (DGRIS) and the Government of the Kingdom of the Netherlands cohosted a seminar on “Protecting Civilians and Managing Threats: Non-state Armed Groups, Violent Extremism, and the Role of UN Peace Operations.”Session 1: Engaging with armed groups for […]
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Engaging non-state armed groups (NSAGs) is an essential tool for the protection of civilians (POC), a priority mandate and core objective for peace operations. Beyond the use of force to prevent or stop armed groups from threatening local populations, multidimensional missions can use a wide range of unarmed strategies, such as dialogue and engagement, to […]
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While narratives around the conflict in Mali often focus on violent extremism and terrorist threats, particularly targeted attacks against the United Nations mission in the country (MINUSMA), there are increasing concerns related to the protection of civilians from different types of threats. Following the Secretary-General’s Strategic Review of MINUSMA and amidst the mandate renewal of […]
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Two days after the Security Council Open Debate on the Protection of Civilians (POC) organized by Poland on May 22, 2018, an IPI policy forum took up the issue of the perceived and actual tensions between the pursuit of political solutions and the protection of civilians in peacekeeping contexts.Ralph Mamiya, a consultant and former Protection […]
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The 2015 UN High-Level Independent Panel on Peace Operations (HIPPO) stressed two major themes that Secretary-General António Guterres continues to focus on: first, the primacy of politics in peacekeeping, which he raised in his September 2017 remarks at the Security Council open debate on peacekeeping; and second, the core obligation of peacekeepers and the entire […]
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Counterterrorism measures are developed to ensure individual and collective security in response to terrorist attacks, but there is growing evidence that counterterrorism measures can infringe upon the protection of civilians by inhibiting the provision of assistance and protection. This tension was the subject of an IPI policy forum on May 23rd, entitled, “The Protection of […]
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Jake Sherman, director of IPI’s Brian Urquhart Center for Peace Operations, opened a standing room only event December 7th marking the launch of a new two-year project that will examine the challenges related to the Protection of Civilians (POC) by UN peace operations.Since the Security Council first established “protection of civilians” as an explicit mandated […]
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Since the late 1990s, POC has continuously gained prominence, both as a concept and in practice, and has become the mandated priority for most UN peacekeeping operations. However, while POC has become a centerpiece of peacekeeping for many stakeholders, it has also become diluted as a consensual label used to justify diverse actions and approaches.This […]
Read moreIf any country, particularly the US, wants to prevent further Chinese gains in the SCS, it will need to substantially increase investment in military capabilities, diplomacy, and…
The lessons from New Caledonia have implications for independence movements in other places like Catalonia, Iraqi Kurdistan, and West…
In the lead up to the 20th anniversary of UN Security Council resolution 1325, perhaps one of the boldest steps the global community can make is to truly upend how it approaches peace: to move away from ideas of merely including women in broken processes, and to move towards creating necessary systemic…
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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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