Monday’s pledges of new troops and police significantly exceed the 10,000 goal that US officials had mentioned.
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United Nations peacekeepers parade during celebrations marking Ivory Coast’s 55th anniversary of independence from France, in front of the presidential palace in Abidjan. In addition, the dozens of leaders from India, Britain and China and elsewhere said they would contribute the kinds of more sophisticated equipment the U.N.’s 16 peacekeeping missions say they need: Special forces, intelligence units, engineering skills, airlift capacity, field hospitals and even unarmed drones.
These announcements represent tangible contributions to peacekeeping. However, by expanding our contributions in these new ways, we ensuring peacekeeping operations can be more effective and safer for both peacekeepers and civilians.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will also address the summit. The U.S.is already the world’s largest financial contributor to peacekeeping-thanks to bipartisan support on Capitol Hill and leadership from the executive branch-and full payment of our dues remains absolutely critical to the enterprise.
[Read the White House memorandum on support to United Nations peacekeeping].
The push to improve peacekeeping began a year ago, when Vice President Biden convened a similar summit at the general assembly.
Ban Ki-moon had warned that he was ready to throw out entire peacekeeping units if their country fails to take action against soldiers accused of sexual abuse, according to reports.
He assured that if the steps that he had announced were embraced, then it would strengthen the peace operations for the decades to come. During the summer, the military commanders of three of the most challenging current missions briefed the Security Council on some of their problems.
“Mandates are ambitious but resources are limited…”
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Irish Maj. Gen. Michael Finn, commanding the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization between Syria and Israel and the Golan Heights, said that restrictions imposed by many contributing countries on their troops to avoid risks in a conflict zone had made his job even more hard.
