The United States is urging countries in Europe, Latin America and Asia to commit more to United Nations peacekeeping operations around the world as Washington considers where it might be able to do the same, the US envoy to the UN said on Friday.
The UN has more than 110,000 soldiers and police in 16 peacekeeping operations around the world in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and in Haiti. While Western countries used to routinely offer peackeepers for blue-helmeted UN battalions, the United Nations now relies mainly on developing countries.
According to Ambassador Samantha Power, this is no longer an appropriate model for the 21st century.
"UN peacekeeping is increasingly funded by developed countries and manned by developing countries," she said. "This is unsustainable and unfair. It will not produce the peacekeeping forces that today's conflicts and our national security demand."
"When the UN created peacekeepers six decades ago, it did not have suicide bombers or IEDs (improvised explosive devices) in mind," she added in a speech at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington-based think-tank.
She highlighted areas where UN peacekeeping operations can and must improve: "Slow troop deployment, limited mobility and the failure to confront aggressors and protect civilians."
"We are encouraging European militaries, many of which are drawing down from Afghanistan, to return to UN peacekeeping where they played a very active role in the 1990s," Power said. "We're urging Latin American militaries to deploy outside the Western Hemisphere. And we're asking East Asian militaries to contribute more substantially to peacekeeping, some for the first time."
Some 700 Chinese peacekeepers are expected to join a United Nations mission in South Sudan at the start of next year. UN officials say this would be the first time China has contributed an infantry battalion to a UN peacekeeping mission.
In September, US Vice President Joseph Biden co-hosted a special high-level meeting in New York on the importance of UN peacekeeping reform. Power said that, at that meeting, Colombia, Japan, Indonesia and more than two dozen other countries from Sweden to Chile to China made new commitments.
Power's remarks come after UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appointed an independent panel of experts to assess where improvements can be made to UN peace operations.
The United States is investing $110 million in improving the military capabilities of six African countries.
Regarding possible US troop contributions to UN peacekeeping, Power said: "We are reviewing whether there are gaps that the United States is uniquely positioned to fill."
An internal UN study in May found that UN peacekeeping missions routinely avoid using force to protect civilians who are under attack, intervening in only 20 percent of cases, despite being authorized to do so by the UN Security Council.
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=logo}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
)
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
)
)
)
)
)
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}