The previous year bore witness to a number of deepening trends for peace operations, including budgetary pressures, shifting geopolitical terrain in the Security Council, and the continued support for large missions mainly focused on managing conflict (with little hope for a political solution in sight) despite renewed focus on the “primacy of the political” in UN peace operations.
At the same time, a new Secretary-General brought fresh energy to the UN, calling more attention to prevention and sustaining peace, and ushering in reform processes across the UN system, now including the Action for Peacekeeping initiative.
This report adds context to reform processes by documenting a number of other developments in peace operations, including operational, strategic, and financial challenges, debates over the values and practices to which peacekeeping should adhere, and progress–or lack thereof–made toward gender parity and geographical diversity among UN leadership.
