Imp to address resource gap in UN peacekeeping ops: India

United Nations, Aug 27 (PTI) Making a case for increasing
financial and logistical resources for UN peacekeeping
missions, India said the international community has to
address the challenge of "resource gap" to ensure such
operations remain "relevant" to current realities.
UN peacekeeping faces a number of challenges with the
"resource gap" being the central one and peacekeepers being
asked to "do more with less", India's Permanent Representative
to the UN, Hardeep Singh Puri said here.
Ambitious agendas are not being backed with the required
financial, operational and logistical resources, Puri added.
"This lack of resources tells on the operational
effectiveness of peacekeeping and casts a shadow on the
credibility of the Council's mandates. Mandates also need to
be relevant to realities on the ground," he said.
Puri was speaking at an open debate on 'UN Peacekeeping
Operations' that India, as the current President of the UN
Security Council, had convened.
He said the Council should "seriously and urgently"
consider suggestions that a two-stage mandate creation process
be adopted that takes into account the complexities on the
ground and matches these with resource requirements.
The need for in-depth consultations with troop and police
contributing countries should be an integral part of the
mandate generation process.

Puri further said it is critical to ensure that the
principles of consent, non-use of force except in self defence
or defence of the mandate and impartiality are strongly
guarded.
"This is important to ensure that United Nations
peacekeeping retains its credibility and universal
acceptability".
He said given the importance of Africa on the UN's
peacekeeping agenda, India supports the capacity building of
the African Union's peace and security architecture so that
the AU becomes an effective and capable partner of the UN
system.
Puri stressed that India is proud to have been associated
with UN peacekeeping from its very inception.
"As a country that has contributed more than 100,000
peacekeepers to virtually every United Nations peacekeeping
operation in the past six decades, we are also conscious that
much has changed since the first peacekeeping missions were
launched more than five decades ago," he said.
Puri said over the years, role the UN peacekeepers or the
Blue Helmets, has changed vastly due to the significant shift
in the geo-political environment and economic, military and
global capabilities.
"Peacekeeping missions today deal predominantly with
intra-state issues rather than the classic role of interposing
troops between warring states.
"The peacekeeping agenda has also added new dimensions in
various civilian and policing domains and the UN's initiatives
on peace building demands a close examination into the entire
enterprise of peacekeeping," Puri said.
He said the challenge before the international community
is to "build on the legacy of peacekeeping and ensure that it
remains relevant to current realities".