Progress on UN peacekeeping reform: HIPPO and beyond

UN peace operations increasingly find themselves deployed in countries where there is no peace to keep, where insurgencies are ongoing, and where peacekeepers face asymmetric threats. In these environments, UN peace operations are asked to perform increasingly challenging tasks to assist governments and to stabilise countries. This requires adequate UN mandates, as well as appropriate military and civilian means. There is also a continuing urgent need to address the issues of sexual exploitation and abuse by UN peacekeepers.

Almost 15 years after the Brahimi Report, in October 2014, then-Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon established the High-level Independent Panel on Peace Operations (HIPPO) to find answers to these challenges. Its findings were published in June 2015 in its report: Uniting Our Strengths for Peace: Politics, Partnership and People. In over 100 pages and more than 100 recommendations, the report called for change. 

This report looks at five key issues that were addressed in the HIPPO report and which require attention to make UN peace operations more effective in the face of current challenges.