C T Online Desk: UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called Thursday for a “serious, broad-based reflection” on reforming the global body’s peacekeeping operations, highlighting persistent “limitations” to their success.
Presenting his most recent policy brief, entitled the “New Agenda for Peace,” Guterres praised the work of UN peacekeeping missions as “saving millions of lives” and preserving ceasefires.
However, the former Portuguese prime minister cited “longstanding unresolved conflicts, driven by complex domestic, geopolitical and transnational factors” as well as a “persistent mismatch between mandates and resources” as exposing the missions’ limitations.
“Peacekeeping operations cannot succeed when there is no peace to keep,” he said.
They also cannot achieve their goals “without clear, prioritized and realistic mandates from the Security Council, centered on political solutions,” he added.
“The New Agenda for Peace therefore reiterates my call for peace enforcement missions and counter-terrorism operations, led by African partners with a UN Security Council mandate,” he added.
The “New Agenda for Peace” is part of a series of proposals the secretary-general is producing ahead of the United Nations’ major “Summit of the Future” next year.
