The importance of peacekeeping missions but also the need for UN peacekeeping to keep up with the times, was discussed on Wednesday at the Cyprus Forum in Nicosia.
The UN peacekeeping missions in the Eastern Mediterranean, UNIFIL, UNFICYP and UNTSO, are now considered ‘model missions’, Annika Hilding Norberg, Head of GCSP Peace Operations and Peacebuilding, Geneva Centre for Security Policy, said during a panel discussion on the future of UN Peacekeeping in the Eastern Mediterranean. The panel focused on the termination of the operations of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) next year.
Norberg said that the situation in the region was ‘dire’, noting the implications and the unpredictability about what comes next regarding the termination of peacekeeping missions. She expressed the position that the multilateral crises faced by the world today do not make peacekeeping irrelevant. On the contrary, she said, violent conflict doubled since last year.
‘Today we are exposed to a geopolitical environment that is falling apart’ and the mechanisms that used to manage this are now under pressure, Norberg said. ‘To me, this is all the more reason not to cancel peacekeeping’, she added.
What we need to do, she said, is to make every effort to strengthen the missions that are there and prepare for the future. According to Norberg, it is argued that future peacekeeping will need to have greater mobility, stronger analysis, make better use of state-of-the-art technologies.
According to Norberg, the UN peacekeeping missions in the eastern Mediterranean – UNIFIL, UNFICYP, UNTSO – are ‘model missions’ now, to be prepared for the future.
Noting that times are changing in fundamental ways, Norberg said that UN peacekeeping needs to keep up, ‘if not be ahead of times’ and utilise AI and drones and other systems and digital technologies. She said that the UN capability plan is already moving in that direction. She said that smaller, focused and trusted peacekeeping missions is something worth working towards.
Referring to new missions, she said that the question is whether we are ‘stuck with coalitions of the willing’ such as in Gaza and Haiti, stressing however that these were not UN peacekeeping missions.
On the creation of new peacekeeping missions, she said that agreement by all parties involved was needed and that this was not easy. Concerning the UN level, she said that an agreement on a new mission depends a lot on the permanent members of the Security Council that have veto power.
As regards UNIFIL, she said there needs to be political backing to peacekeeping missions and there needs to be a mechanism for their withdrawal based on a peace agreement, not suddenly, like with UNIFIL.
She also said that there will be an EU civilian-military mission in Lebanon, noting that it can have a supporting role, but that she could not see them doing the role of the UN.
Dr. Arthur Boutellis, Non-resident Senior Adviser at the International Peace Institute (IPI), noted that, still, peacekeeping budget is important to the overall UN budget. He stressed that it was important to keep in mind that the annual budget for peacekeeping was a tiny percentage if one compares a day of war. It is ‘a small investment in peace ‘, he said.
He also said that UNIFIL has around 8000 peacekeepers from almost 50 countries, noting that the mission is coming to an end not because of the success of its mandate but due to a decision of the Security Council, largely motivated by the US.
He said that the Force has been an important stabilising sector but that there are limits for the peacekeeping force as regards the current situation in the country. It is beyond what the peacekeepers can do, he added.
Boutellis also said that now there’s a broad consensus between Lebanese and international actors that once UNIFIL closes there will be a vacuum of provision on monitoring as regards de-escalation, and that lighter UN presence is being discussed, while that the EU and others have proposed assistance as regards capacity building for the Lebanese army.