UN Peace Operations: Closed Consultations
This afternoon (27 August), Security Council members will hold closed consultations on UN peace operations. Denmark and Pakistan, who are working as a “peacekeeping duo” to promote the issue as a key priority, requested the meeting. Latvia supported the meeting request. The meeting follows the circulation, on 20 August, of the Secretary-General’s report on the review of the future of all forms of UN peace operations. The expected briefers are Under-Secretary-General for Peace Operations Jean-Pierre Lacroix and Under-Secretary-General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs Rosemary DiCarlo.
The review was mandated by the Pact for the Future, the outcome document of the 2024 Summit of the Future, and was jointly led by the Department of Peace Operations (DPO) and the Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs (DPPA). The two departments conducted a series of consultations with intergovernmental entities, individual member states, and regional groupings as well as with other stakeholders. They also received written input from member states, regional organisations, civil society, and academia.
The report assesses the state of UN peace operations against the backdrop of a rapidly changing security environment and offers recommendations on how to adapt these tools to maintain their relevance in a new geopolitical era. The assessment further clarifies the “spectrum approach” introduced by the High-Level Independent Panel on UN Peace Operations (HIPPO) that conducted a similar review a decade ago. The approach considers a continuum of responses—including by UN peacekeeping operations, special political missions (SPMs), UN Country Teams, and other UN system entities—and seeks to facilitate smoother transitions between different phases of UN engagements and mission types.
The review report’s recommendations address some of the themes that often recur in discussions on the reform of UN peace operations, including host state consent, crafting focused and adaptable mandates, and implementing a network approach to leverage the collective impact of the UN system in sustaining peace. Among other things, the report calls for a new partnership with host states, in an effort to address the challenges faced by UN peace operations in this regard. In recent years, several missions closed at the request of host states, while others faced various restrictions and repeated violations of status of forces (SOFA) or status of mission (SOMA) agreements.
The need to move away from “Christmas tree” mandates—a phrase used in the HIPPO report to describe a situation whereby Council members mandate a UN peace operation with so many tasks that they could risk diluting the mission’s efforts—is not new. However, there have been mounting calls, particularly from some permanent members and other like-minded members, for UN peace operations to focus on their core mandates in order to provide more effective support to key security and political objectives. Against this backdrop, the review report underscores the need to focus mission mandates on areas where peace operations have a comparative advantage, including tasks aimed at halting or de-escalating violence, pursuing political settlements and, where mandated, protecting civilians.
The report also underscores the need for missions to be more responsive to evolving realities on the ground, addressing concerns that the mandates of some peace operations have remained unchanged despite significant shifts in circumstances. The report particularly recognises the UN Secretariat’s responsibility to contribute to this by presenting frank assessments of how missions are delivering on their mandates as well as options for better aligning the mandates with the realities on the ground.
Building on the proposal made by the Secretary-General under his UN80 Initiative, the reform effort launched in March 2025 to restructure and streamline the UN system, the report also proposes a division of labour between UN peace operations and the wider UN system, whereby the relevant programmatic tasks, along with the associated resources to implement them, would be delegated to UN entities best placed to carry them out. Yesterday afternoon (26 August), Secretary-General António Guterres briefed an informal meeting of the General Assembly on the review report and its recommendations. Member states offered preliminary reactions to the report, while indicating that they look forward to examining the recommendations in greater detail in due course.
Given that the report comes towards the end of his tenure, Guterres is unlikely to play a significant role in overseeing its implementation. Much of the responsibility is expected to fall to his successor to work with member states to determine how to steer UN peace operations over the coming years amid an increasingly resource-constrained and geopolitically polarised multilateral environment. Many of the candidates who aspire to be the next Secretary-General have implicitly criticised Guterres’ peacemaking efforts by stressing the importance of active diplomacy and noting the UN’s absence from conflict zones. In this context and against a background of increasing conflicts, including interstate wars, the report proposes concrete ways to enhance peacemaking, preventive diplomacy, and the peaceful settlement of disputes across the full spectrum of peace operations. This means strengthening the good offices of the Secretary-General, his or her envoys, and the Secretariat. Notably, it also includes a clear focus on the Secretariat’s role in helping to bridge differences and supporting the Security Council and member states in building a greater common understanding of the threats to peace and security and the options available to address them.
At today’s meeting, DiCarlo may highlight DPPA’s recent publication, which provides a comprehensive overview of the history and evolution of SPMs between 1945 and 2025. Launched in June, the publication underscores the continued relevance and utility of SPMs as vital and adaptable tools for addressing current and emerging challenges.
The review report contains more specific recommendations that DiCarlo and Lacroix are likely to address in some detail this afternoon. These include enhancing the agility of peace operations by making them more flexible, adaptable, and efficient. In this regard, the report underscores the need to ensure cost-effectiveness and accountable peace operations, taking into account the UN’s liquidity crisis, resulting from member states’ failure to pay their assessed contributions to the peacekeeping budget in full and on time, and the broader discussions under the UN80 Initiative. It also calls for more resilient and technologically enabled peace operations, recognising the rapidly evolving operational environment and the need to adapt to an increasingly complex threat landscape. This includes modernising capabilities and systems as well as ensuring the deployment of qualified personnel to meet current and future challenges.
Additionally, the report highlights the need for partnerships to foster greater cooperation with regional and subregional organisations, particularly in peace support and enforcement operations, including within the framework of resolution 2719 of 21 December 2023 on the financing of African Union (AU)-led peace support operations (AUPSOs). The upcoming review of the resolution, three years after its adoption, is likely to be a focus of Council members’ attention over the coming months. The issue may also feature prominently in October during the Security Council’s meeting on UN-AU cooperation, as well as the annual consultations between members of the Security Council and the AU Peace and Security Council (AUPSC) in New York.
Over the past two years, member states have had numerous opportunities to discuss the future of UN peace operations, including through a series of meetings convened by elected Security Council members to discuss the review of UN peace operations. As such, most of the recommendations contained in the report are not new to the UN membership; rather, they largely reflect the views and perspectives that member states have already expressed during these discussions and the briefings that DPPA and DPO provided to the regional groups last year.
Member states now need to decide how to take these recommendations forward. They may wish to consider them, in particular, during the upcoming sessions of the relevant intergovernmental committees of the General Assembly, including the Special Political and Decolonization Committee (Fourth Committee) and the Special Committee on Peacekeeping Operations (C34). This may allow for the development of some initial ideas that could be discussed with the next Secretary-General early next year.
As far as the Security Council is concerned, today’s meeting will provide its first opportunity to react to the report in a closed format and seek further clarifications on its findings and recommendations. Some members may choose to offer preliminary reactions, welcoming the recommendations on cost-effectiveness and more focused mandates that align with the position they have advocated. Others may continue to stress the need to give priority to protecting civilians, particularly in light of the operational constraints that UN peacekeeping operations are facing in effectively carrying out their mandates due to the liquidity crisis and the resulting fund and personnel reductions. Some may highlight the Secretary-General’s emphasis on a division of labour between UN peace operations and the wider UN system while underscoring the need to maintain an integrated approach across the board. Others may reiterate their views on thematic priorities that they consider core to the work of peace operations—including those relating to women, peace and security (WPS), children and armed conflict, and climate, peace and security—and caution against treating them as secondary.
It seems that Denmark and Pakistan plan to propose press elements during today’s meeting, which will indicate Council members’ intention to continue engaging on the report and to consider its recommendations.
