UN Peacekeepers on patrol in Abyei. UN Photo/Stuart Price/Flickr. Some rights reserved.There is no debating that recent news stories on UN peacekeeping missions have been particularly off-putting for readers worldwide. On 30 July, The Guardian revealed that the United Nations had knowingly continued employing a Russian company guilty of sexual abuse in the Congo. Just a few days later, on 11 August, Amnesty International alleged that UN peacekeepers shot dead a 16-year-old boy and his father, and raped a 12-year-old girl in the Central African Republic (CAR).
The latter incident prompted UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon to raise alarm bells with the Security Council, call for profound soul-searching within the Department for Peacekeeping Operations and ask, among other things, for the resignation of the head of the UN mission to the CAR.
At the same time, it is becoming clear that UN peacekeeping operations are all the more relevant and deserving of the general public's attention. In 2014, conflict forced 42,500 persons per day to leave their homes and seek protection elsewhere, according to data from the UNHCR. A survey by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) estimated that 180,000 people died in 42 conflicts last year. Given the ongoing flow of distressing news about migrants in the Mediterranean and Calais, 2015 will probably not fare any better.
