Thursday 10 April 2014

Anothe lame duck mission in the making

The same day I had a discussion about the frustratingly slow and very incomplete deployment of the UN peacekeeping operation in Mali (MINUSMA), the Security Council has approved the fielding of a very large mission to the Central African Republic. To be on the safe side, in terms of readiness to deploy, the Council decided that the effective starting date for this new operation will be September 15. But everyone knows that there is very little spare capacity really available for these very large missions. The new one will be struggling for military, police and civilian staff as MINUSMA is doing.

Actually, it is time to think very differently about the peacekeeping operations. We cannot just base ourselves on the old model of extensive military presence for an extremely large duration of time. Things need to be thought in more dynamic terms, shorter and more specialised missions, with a very firm political mandate. 

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