Professor Lise Howard in the Washington Post’s Monkey Cage: “Five myths about peacekeeping”

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The Conflict Resolution program’s founder, associate professor of government at Georgetown and the author of Power in Peacekeeping, Lise Howard, writes on the successes and limitations of United Nations peacekeeping, some key actors in the field, and how peacekeeping is really nothing like counterinsurgency.

A soldier gets a peck from his daughter during a sendoff ceremony in Incheon, South Korea, 08 July 2019, for members of South Korea’s 11th rotational contingent of peacekeeping troops to South Sudan. South Korea has been participating in the UN peacekeeping mission in South Sudan since March 2013, rotating its contingent every eight months, to help with the country’s reconstruction. (Yonhap/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)

Professor Howard writes:

United Nations Secretary General António Guterres warns that a “financial crisis” threatens peacekeeping activities because U.N. member states have not paid 25 percent of the $6.7 billion peacekeeping budget. Those dues are crucial because peacekeepers are protecting millions of civilians in more than a dozen war zones and hot spots. The United Nations has nearly 90,000 uniformed personnel deployed, more than any other type of uniformed troops in current conflicts around the globe. Peacekeeping is important, effective and inexpensive, but it remains mired in myths.