UNITED NATIONS: The United Nations secretary-general on Friday began a sweeping review of the world body’s peacekeeping operations by naming an “independent” panel of experts with past ties to several UN missions.

It’s the most comprehensive look at the 130,000-strong peacekeeping staff in almost 15 years.

Peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous said that operations are under the most severe strain since the UN was founded, almost 70 years ago. More than 100 peacekeepers have died this year, including in targeted attacks, and 45 were taken captive for two weeks by Al Qaeda-linked fighters in the tense border area between Syria and Israel. Ebola is the latest threat.

At the same time, some of the UN’s 16 peacekeeping missions have been criticised for their lack of effectiveness and slow pace of deployment to crisis zones.

In May, the UN’s internal watchdog said peacekeeping forces responded immediately to only a minority of attacks on civilians between 2010 and 2013 and almost never used force to protect them when they did respond.

Its report studied eight peacekeeping missions whose mandate included protecting civilians. And this week, a UN review found that the 20,300-strong UN-African Union joint peacekeeping force in western Sudan’s Darfur region had been “unduly conservative” in publicly sharing information about possible wrongdoing by Sudanese government or pro-government forces.

The Security Council, concerned about the overall Darfur mission and its $1.3 billion annual budget, ordered a review of it earlier this year. Such findings, along with the growing dangers that peacekeepers face from terror groups like Al Qaeda, helped prompt the new, system-wide review.

In comments to a UN debate on peacekeeping, the United States pointed out it can take more than a year for the UN, which has no standing army and relies on contributing from member states, to get some peacekeeping missions completely on the ground. “It has been 10 months since the Security Council authorised an emergency increase in troops to stem the violence in South Sudan, and yet the mission is still not at full strength,” said David Pressman, alternate representative for special political affairs.

Published in Dawn, November 2nd, 2014