Thank you very much for having me here today. I'll give brief remarks just to kick-start the conversation this morning.
I will start by saying that peacekeeping is one of the most difficult tasks there is, and it is a very specific activity that differs from other types of military intervention. It is an inherently temporary measure, a limited instrument that creates the space for a nationally owned political solution.
Peacekeeping is also one of the most criticized activities of the UN, prone to a lot of debates and regularly making headlines for its alleged failures. It is also one of the less understood ones. It is complex. It often creates a lot of expectations. These operations have often been given mandates that are too ambitious and create too many expectations. At the same time, they are given too many tasks. They are provided with the unachievable protection of civilian mandates, conceived in security terms, in countries where there is no infrastructure and where the willingness of the parties to the conflict to comply with Security Council resolutions is questionable at best.
We tend to assess peacekeeping also on what it cannot deliver—meaning enforcing peace—forgetting that the UN can only be a facilitator, an honest broker, in those crises that need to be solved by the parties to the conflict themselves.
It is also an activity that has always been suffering from a lack of investment, whether political, financial, or military. Peacekeeping operations have always been done on the cheap.
When the Secretary-General requested 8,000 troops to protect the security zones of Bosnia-Herzegovina in the 1990s, the council authorized the deployment of only 3,000 peacekeepers. Where an American soldier costs $800,000 annually, a UN peacekeeper costs only $20,000. When NATO deploys some 130,000 soldiers in Afghanistan, the UN deploys about 11,000 blue helmets in the north of Mali, which is twice the size of Afghanistan. When NATO is deploying 50,000 soldiers in Kosovo, the UN is deploying 16,000 blue helmets in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which is the size of continental Europe.
Although 80% of peacekeeping operation expenditures are militarily related, they are financed through limited civilian budgets, and not through the larger military budgets where peacekeeping spending could be more easily absorbed.
Contrary to what people generally think, UN peacekeeping is a particularly cost-effective activity, but of course there's a limit to what you can do and what you can achieve in those circumstances. Peacekeeping is also a very diverse activity, from observation and monitoring missions to multi-dimensional mandates and political assistance and mediation. It is also an activity that has gone through constant reform for almost the past 20 years, the latest reform being the Secretary-General's action for peacekeeping initiative. I can also, of course, go back to this in the debate, if you wish.
Peacekeeping is also an activity that is constantly evolving in a changing and increasingly challenging environment, with the most challenging one today, certainly, being MINUSMA, which in my view is testing the outer limits of peacekeeping.
Peacekeeping operations are also the only international interventions where, for the most part, with the noticeable exception of China, those who decide and mandate—i.e. members of the Security Council—are not the same as those who contribute financially, and therefore, decide on budgets in the fifth committee after mandates are voted upon. Also, those who contribute in troops...and 2017 has been the deadliest year for peacekeepers, with 134 peacekeepers who have died.
That situation creates a delusion of responsibility, where it is often easy to put the blame on the UN. It is easy to see the UN as an exit strategy for the deployment of some countries or regions in the most remote places of the world, where big powers' strategic interests are not at stake.
Nevertheless, having said that, I think that these peacekeeping operations are value for the money. They concern the stability of our planet as a whole. In the way they manage crisis and conflicts, I think that they are the only method worth pursuing, combining the political with the military, the police, the rule of law, and respect for human rights.
As I said earlier, it is an activity that is constantly improving and, of course, like any other endeavour, it depends on the investment of its member states, on their capacity, and their comparative advantage. The universal composition of peacekeeping is what forms their added value and of course, it has a cost, in terms of interoperability.
Peacekeeping needs a diversity of contributions and western countries' contributions can fill some of the traditional gaps that these operations often face, such as medical assets, helicopters, engineer companies, reserve capacity, and staff officers. There are certainly operations that are much more integrated than NATO or EU ones, which are more contingent on operations. For western countries contributing to peacekeeping, it is also a way to be willing to work with African and Asian countries that often have less capability and training.
I think I will stop here and answer your questions.
Thank you.