World powers are becoming increasingly reluctant to commit their forces to UN peacekeeping missions. As a result, others are stepping into the breach.
Image: UN Photo/Christopher Herwig
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Make peace between Israelis and the Arabs, solve the conflict between India and Pakistan — such were the visions that were shared by many at the United Nations back in 1948. UN missions, they believed, could and would bring peace to the world's conflict zones.
It was in 1948, when the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO) started monitoring the ceasefire between Israel and its Arab neighbors, that the history of the blue helmet peacekeeping missions began – a history that has featured both successful missions and setbacks.
One year later and UNMOGIP, the United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan began its work mediating in the Kashmir dispute. The total number of missions with often cumbersome acronyms has in the meantime risen to 72. UNTSO und UNMOGIP are still ongoing, but neither of these UN missions has brought lasting peace.
A history of the Middle East peace process
For over half a century, disputes between Israelis and Palestinians over land, refugees and holy sites remain unresolved. DW gives you a short history of when the conflict flared and when attempts were made to end it.
UN Security Council Resolution 242, 1967
United Nations Security Council Resolution 242, passed on November 22, 1967, called for the exchange of land for peace. Since then, many of the attempts to establish peace in the region have referred to 242. The resolution was written in accordance with Chapter VI of the UN Charter, under which resolutions are recommendations, not orders.
Image: Getty Images/Keystone
Camp David Accords, 1978
A coalition of Arab states, led by Egypt and Syria, fought Israel in the Yom Kippur or October War in October 1973. The conflict eventually led to the secret peace talks that yielded two agreements after 12 days. This picture from March 26, 1979, shows Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, his US counterpart Jimmy Carter and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin after signing the accords in Washington.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/B. Daugherty
The Madrid Conference, 1991
The US and the former Soviet Union came together to organize a conference in the Spanish capital. The discussions involved Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and the Palestinians — not from the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) — who met with Israeli negotiators for the first time. While the conference achieved little, it did create the framework for later, more productive talks.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/J. Hollander
Oslo I Accord, 1993
The negotiations in Norway between Israel and the PLO, the first direct meeting between the two parties, resulted in the Oslo I Accord. The agreement was signed in the US in September 1993. It demanded that Israeli troops withdraw from West Bank and Gaza Strip and a self-governing, interim Palestinian authority be set up for a five-year transitional period. A second accord was signed in 1995.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/A. Sachs
Camp David Summit Meeting, 2000
US President Bill Clinton invited Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat to the retreat in July 2000 to discuss borders, security, settlements, refugees and Jerusalem. Despite the negotiations being more detailed than ever before, no agreement was concluded. The failure to reach a consensus at Camp David was followed by renewed Palestinian uprising, the Second Intifada.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/R. Edmonds
The Arab Peace Initiative, 2002
The Camp David negotiations were followed first by meetings in Washington and then in Cairo and Taba, Egypt — all without results. Later the Arab League proposed the Arab Peace Initiative in Beirut in March 2002. The plan called on Israel to withdraw to pre-1967 borders so that a Palestinian state could be set up in the West Bank and Gaza. In return, Arab countries would agree to recognize Israel.
Image: Getty Images/C. Kealy
The Roadmap, 2003
The US, EU, Russia and the UN worked together as the Middle East Quartet to develop a road map to peace. While Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas accepted the text, his Israeli counterpart Ariel Sharon had more reservations with the wording. The timetable called for a final agreement on a two-state solution to be reached in 2005. Unfortunately, it was never implemented.
Image: Getty Iamges/AFP/J. Aruri
Annapolis, 2007
In 2007, US President George W. Bush hosted a conference in Annapolis, Maryland, to relaunch the peace process. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas took part in talks with officials from the Quartet and over a dozen Arab states. It was agreed that further negotiations would be held with the goal of reaching a peace deal by the end of 2008.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/S. Thew
Washington, 2010
In 2010, US Middle East Envoy George Mitchell convinced Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to agree to and implement a 10-month moratorium on settlements in disputed territories. Later, Netanyahu and Abbas agreed to relaunch direct negotiations to resolve all issues. Negotiations began in Washington in September 2010, but within weeks there was a deadlock.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/M. Milner
Cycle of escalation and ceasefire continues
A new round of violence broke out in and around Gaza in late 2012. A ceasefire was reached between Israel and those in power in the Gaza Strip, which held until June 2014. The kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers in June 2014 resulted in renewed violence and eventually led to the Israeli military operation Protective Edge. It ended with a ceasefire on August 26, 2014.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Paris summit, 2017
Envoys from over 70 countries gathered in Paris, France, to discuss the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. Netanyahu slammed the discussions as "rigged" against his country. Neither Israeli nor Palestinian representatives attended the summit. "A two-state solution is the only possible one," French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said at the opening of the event.
Image: Reuters/T. Samson
Deteriorating relations in 2017
Despite the year's optimistic opening, 2017 brought further stagnation in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. A deadly summer attack on Israeli police at the Temple Mount, a site holy to both Jews and Muslims, sparked deadly clashes. Then US President Donald Trump's plan to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem prompted Palestinian leader Abbas to say "the measures ... undermine all peace efforts."
Image: Reuters/A. Awad
Trump's peace plan backfires, 2020
US President Donald Trump presented a peace plan that freezes Israeli settlement construction but retains Israeli control over most of the illegal settlements it has already built. The plan would double Palestinian-controlled territory but asks Palestinians to cross a red line and accept the previously constructed West Bank settlements as Israeli territory. Palestinians reject the plan.
Image: Reuters/M. Salem
Conflict reignites in 2021
Plans to evict four families and give their homes in East Jerusalem to Jewish settlers led to escalating violence in May 2021. Hamas fired over 2,000 rockets at Israel, and Israeli military airstrikes razed buildings in the Gaza Strip. The international community, including Germany's Foreign Ministry, called for an end to the violence and both sides to return to the negotiating table.
Image: Mahmud Hams/AFP
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Trump slashes budget
Nearly 90,000 soldiers and police officers are currently taking part in UN peacekeeping deployments. That is a drop of around twenty thousand since 2015.
"Some members of the UN Security Council have the feeling that UN missions are too expensive and achieve too little," says Jaïr van der Lijn, a senior researcher at SIPRI, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, "which is why they want to reduce the budget for peacekeeping missions, with the Trump administration leading the way.”
Nearly 4,000 blue helmets have been killed during peacekeeping missions
When the Cold War came to an abrupt end three decades ago, the global powers, to an extent at least, subscribed to multilateralism. Between 1989 and 1994 the Security Council gave the go-ahead for 20 new peacekeeping deployments. The number of blue helmets went up sevenfold. And in 1988 the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded collectively to the UN Peacekeeping Forces. But the UN failed to deliver on the high expectations. Yugoslavia, Ruanda, and Somalia all became synonyms for failed UN missions.
From the mid-1990s, more and more regional alliances, including NATO, began to see it as their responsibility to bring about peace. It is a trend that continues today, SIPRI's van der Lijn tells DW: "While there has been a steep decrease in the number taking part in peacekeeping missions, the numbers deployed in non-peacekeeping missions has actually risen – above all inanti-terror operations."
One example cited by van der Lijn is the Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF) operating in the Sahel region and combining, among others, forces from Chad, Niger and Nigeria to combat the Boko Haram Jihadist insurgency.
With so many regional actors getting involved, it is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain an overview of who is doing what. This is the case inMali, where a UN mission called MINUSMA is tasked with monitoring a fragile peace accord and, at the same time, guaranteeing the security of the civilian population. Meanwhile, there is also an EU mission supporting the Malian police and another training the Malian military. A French military mission is combatting Islamist groups, partly with international backing. And then there is the G5 Sahel Joint Force – a partnership of five Sahel states trying to bring security to the region.
It is the same situation in Somalia, the Central African Republic, or Afghanistan says van der Lijn: "The international community has created a highly-complex constellation of the most varied organizations that are all launching their own operations. They really struggle to cooperate. They double up or tread on each other's toes. And sometimes they just do their own thing without any real coordination. Since the 1990s the UN has learned a lot and is much better placed to take on difficult missions."
And it remains the case that 70 percent of all peacekeeping deployments in Africa are stationed south of the Sahara. However, some larger missions in this region have recently been discontinued while new UN missions have begun operations in Libya and Yemen.
The majority of the blue helmets currently come from sub-Saharan countries or from Southeast Asia.
"African states mainly dispatch troops in their own neighborhood," says van der Lijn. " For example, Ethiopia nearly only sends troops to Somalia and Sudan. The aim is clearly to protect their own national security. And Mali's neighbors only contribute to MINUSMA clearly in the hope of ensuring that the problems there remain Mali's problems and don't put their own stability at risk."
The US is the only western country to put forward a sizeable contingent – mainly deployed in Resolute Support Mission (RSM) in Afghanistan. But US President Donald Trump is determined to further reduce troop numbers.
Countries supplying peacekeeping troops are paid just under 1,600 US dollars per month per soldier. No surprise therefore that it is above all poorer nations that provide troop contingents.
UN peacekeeping missions in Africa
MONUSCO is the biggest and most expensive UN peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo. This is only one of the many other African countries where the "blue helmets" are intervening.
Image: picture-alliance/AA/S. Mohamed
DR Congo: UN's largest mission
Since 1999, the UN has been trying to pacify the eastern region of the DR Congo. The mission known as MONUSCO has nearly 20,000 soldiers and an annual budget of $1.4 billion (1.3 billion euros). Despite being the largest and most expensive mission of the United Nations, violence in the country continues.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/M. Kappeler
Darfur: Powerless against violence
UNAMID is a joint mission of the African Union and the UN in Sudan's volatile Darfur region. Observers consider the mission a failure. "The UN Security Council should work harder at finding political solutions, rather than spending money for the military's long-term deployment," says security expert Thierry Vircoulon.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/A. G. Farran
S.Sudan: Turning a blind eye to fighting?
Since the beginning of South Sudan's civil war in 2013, nearly 4 million people have been displaced according to the UN. Some of them are being sheltered in UN compounds. But when clashes between government forces and rebels broke out in the capital Juba in July 2016, the blue helmets failed to effectively intervene. Later, the Kenyan UNMISS commander was sacked by former UN chief Ban Ki-moon.
Image: Getty Images/A.G.Farran
Mali: The most dangerous UN mission in the world
UN peacekeepers in Mali are monitoring compliance with the peace agreement between the government and an alliance of Tuareg-led rebels. But Islamist terrorist groups such as AQIM continue to carry out attacks making MINUSMA one of the UN's most dangerous military intervention in the world. Germany has deployed more than 700 soldiers as well as helicopters.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/M. Kappeler
CAR: Sexual abuse scandals making headlines
MINUSCA, the UN's mission in Central Africa Republic has not helped to improve the image of the United Nations in Africa. French troops have been accused of sexually abusing children by the Code Blue Campaign. Three years on, victims haven't got any help from the UN. Since 2014, 10,000 soldiers and 1,800 police officers have been deployed. Violence in the country has receded but tensions remain.
Image: Sia Kambou/AFP/Getty Images
Western Sahara: Hope for lasting peace
The UN mission in the Westsahara known as MINURSO has been active since 1991. MINURSO is there to monitor the armistice between Morocco and the rebels of the "Frente Polisario" who are fighting for the independence of the Western Sahara. In 2016, Morocco which has occupied this territory since 1976, dismissed 84 MINURSO staff after being angered by a statement from the UN Secretary-General.
Image: Getty Images/AFP/A. Senna
Ivory Coast: Peaceful end of a mission
The UN mission in Ivory Coast fulfilled its objectives on June 30, 2016 after 14 years. Since 2016, the troops have been gradually withdrawn. Former Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said this was a "turning point for the United Nations and the Ivory Coast." But only after the full withdrawal will it be clearly known whether or not the mission was successful on a long-term basis.
Image: Getty Images/AFP/I. Sanogo
Liberia: Mission accomplished
The UN deployment in Liberia is - as in neighboring Ivory Coast - will soon be history. The soldiers are leaving by mid-2017. Since the end of the 14-year civil war, UNMIL has ensured stability in Liberia and helped build a functioning state. Liberia's government now wants to provide security for itself. The country is still struggling with the consequences of a devastating Ebola epidemic.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/K. Nietfeld
Sudan: Ethiopians as peace promoters?
The UNISFA soldiers are patrolling the disputed oil-rich region of Abyei. Sudan and South Sudan both claim to be rightful owners of this territory located between the two countries. More than 4,000 blue helmets from Ethiopia are deployed. Ethiopia is the world's second largest peace-keeping contributor. At the same time, the Ethiopian army is accused of human rights violations back home.
Image: Getty Images/AFP/A. G. Farran
Somalia: Future model AU mission?
UN peacekeepers in Somalia are fighting under the leadership of the African Union in a mission known as AMISOM. The soldiers are in the Horn of African country to battle the al-Shabaab Islamists and bring stability to the war-torn nation. Ethiopia, Burundi, Djibouti, Kenya and Uganda, Sierra Leone, Ghana and Nigeria have all contributed their troops for AMISOM.
