United Nations Peacekeeping Forces

The United Nations Peacekeeping Forces are employed by the UN to maintain or re-establish peace in an area of armed conflict.
The UN may engage in conflicts between states as well as in struggles within states. The UN acts as an impartial third party in order to prepare the ground for a settlement of the issues that have provoked armed conflict.
The UN Peacekeeping Forces may only be employed when both parties to a conflict accept their presence.
The Peacekeeping Forces are subordinate to the leadership of the United Nations. They are normally deployed as a consequence of a UN Security Council decision. However, on occasion, the initiative has been taken by the General Assembly.
Operational control belongs to the Secretary-General and his secretariat.

There are two kinds of peacekeeping operations – unarmed observer groups and lightly-armed military forces. The latter are only allowed to employ their weapons for self-defence.
The observer groups are concerned with gathering information for the UN about actual conditions prevailing in an area.
The military forces are entrusted with more extended tasks, such as keeping the parties to a conflict apart and maintaining order in an area.
The first UN peacekeeping mission was a team of observers deployed to the Middle East in 1948, during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.

With China significantly scaling up its troop contribution for United Nations Peacekeeping missions, India and the U.S. are looking to undertake training of military personnel for the missions from South East Asian countries on the lines of the ongoing initiative for African countries.

India has consistently been among the top troop contributing nations to the U.N. and is the fifth largest with 5,424 personnel in eight countries. India has so far participated in 51 of the 71 missions and contributed over 2 lakh personnel.
The U.S. on the other hand has never contributed ground troops but contributes 27% of the U.N. peacekeeping budget.
In 2016, India and the U.S. began a joint annual initiative “UN Peacekeeping Course for African Partners” to build and enhance the capacity of African troop and police-contributing countries to participate in the U.N. and regional peacekeeping operations.
While this is going on, the U.S. is keen on a similar initiative for South East Asian nations like Vietnam and others.

China is significantly expanding its troop contribution to the U.N. in addition to the funding. It currently has over 2,500 troops in various U.N. missions and has committed another 8,000 troops as standby. Once implemented, it will make China the largest provider of troops to the UNPK.
China presently contributes 12% of the U.N. regular general budget and 15% of the peacekeeping budget. India’s contribution to the regular budget is 0.83% and 0.16% of the peacekeeping budget.

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