Between Bureaucracy and Adhocracy: Crafting a Spectrum of UN Peace Operations

The array of tools the UN has developed to prevent, manage and resolve conflict has expanded in recent years. They are being deployed in new formats, from political missions and small peacebuilding teams, to large observer missions and multidimension Read More...

Key Messages from Civil Society on the UN’s role in Peace and Security

On its 70th anniversary, the United Nations finds itself at a crossroads. Old and new threats, challenges and risks to international peace and security are increasingly testing the ability of the organization and the efficacy of the instruments avail Read More...

Missed Opportunities: Gender and the UN’s Peacebuilding and Peace Operations Reports

Gender issues are now a regular feature of the international community’s approach to promoting peace and security. Two high-profile reports recently issued by the UN – on peace operations and the organization’s peacebuilding architecture – in Read More...

The “Gaping Hole” in the UN for Sustaining Peace

In 2015, multiple reviews of the UN’s peace efforts have added to the collective realization that UN peace operations – designed in the 1990s to support post-civil war peace deals – may have reached their limits for maintaining international pe Read More...

With “Sustaining Peace” can the UN turn rhetoric into action?

In April 2015, Burundian President Pierre Nkurunziza announced that he would be seeking a third-term of office—a move that his opponents decried as unconstitutional. Protests and clashes between opposition supporters and security forces followed. A Read More...