UN Peacekeeping

The role of women in peacekeeping has for long been neglected in a world where women have a unique role in their local and national environments to handle and solve conflicts. Several UN organs have actively contributed to the training and inclusion of women in peacebuilding and developed reports to highlight their contributions. The UN must therefore learn from best practices both from its own organs and the historical role of women as peacebuilders in countries such as Yemen in order to develop mechanisms to ensure gender parity in peacekeeping. 

The latest round of conflict between Israel and Hamas raised the spectre of the simmering conflict in the Middle East before the international community again. Whenever the situation escalates as it did in May 2021, analysts and politicians alike ask, “What is the UN doing about it?”  The answer is that the UN is constantly working to resolve this conflict, albeit with mixed results. 

The articles in this dossier, drawn from a selection of established academics and younger scholars, highlight the expanding array of issues and challenges the UN faces as its competencies increase in the face of multiplying threats to the global system.

1989 was a momentous year. The fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 signified the end of the Cold War and the beginning of a new world order. The implications of these unfolding events for the UN were hard to predict at that point, but it was clear that they were inaugurating a new era.