Twenty years ago, the United Nations Security Council established the first explicit Protection of Civilians (POC) mandate, resolving that the UN peacekeeping mission in Sierra Leone afford protection to civilians under imminent threat of physical violence.On May 22nd, during the week in which the Security Council held its annual POC open debate, IPI, in partnership […]
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In recent years, the UN and its member states have promoted comprehensive approaches and integrated structures and processes to improve coherence and consistency between political peacekeeping, humanitarian, human rights, and development efforts undertaken by the UN and its partners. For POC specifically, coordination between the military, police, and civilian components of peace operations; between peace […]
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Almost 20 years since the first Protection of Civilians (POC) mandate was established for a United Nations peacekeeping operation, POC has become an essential element of peace operations. However, gaps in means and resources, command-and-control issues, inadequate training and expertise of UN personnel, and caveats imposed by troop-contributing countries have all hampered the actual delivery […]
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A day-long seminar was held at IPI on October 26th on the difficulties faced by United Nations peace operations in protecting civilians in complex environments, areas where creative solutions are needed to address non-state armed groups (NSAG) and violent extremism.Co-sponsored by IPI, the Directorate General for International Relations and Strategy (DGRIS) of the French Ministry […]
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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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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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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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