Peacekeeping, by the numbers

New York University’s Center on International Cooperation is out with its annual Review of Global Peace Operations. It’s a fantastic update on UN and non-UN peacekeeping operations around the world. It’s also full of good data on where peacekeepers operate, who they are, and who funds them. And on those questions, the report provides a ...

By , a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies.

New York University's Center on International Cooperation is out with its annual Review of Global Peace Operations. It's a fantastic update on UN and non-UN peacekeeping operations around the world. It's also full of good data on where peacekeepers operate, who they are, and who funds them. And on those questions, the report provides a vivid reminder that UN peacekeeping is, for the most part, an activity done in Africa (almost 75 percent of UN military personnel are deployed there), by Africans and Asians (combined, more than 70 percent of peacekeepers come from these regions), and funded by the advanced industrialized countries (all told, these countries pay more than 80 percent of peackeeping costs). In a very real sense, the rich world has hired Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Indian, Egyptian, Nigerian and Nepalese troops to grapple with some of the world's most intractable conflicts.

New York University’s Center on International Cooperation is out with its annual Review of Global Peace Operations. It’s a fantastic update on UN and non-UN peacekeeping operations around the world. It’s also full of good data on where peacekeepers operate, who they are, and who funds them. And on those questions, the report provides a vivid reminder that UN peacekeeping is, for the most part, an activity done in Africa (almost 75 percent of UN military personnel are deployed there), by Africans and Asians (combined, more than 70 percent of peacekeepers come from these regions), and funded by the advanced industrialized countries (all told, these countries pay more than 80 percent of peackeeping costs). In a very real sense, the rich world has hired Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Indian, Egyptian, Nigerian and Nepalese troops to grapple with some of the world’s most intractable conflicts.

David Bosco is a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies. He is the author of The Poseidon Project: The Struggle to Govern the World’s Oceans. Twitter: @multilateralist

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