Strengthening UN Peace Operations: Modalities and Opportunities for Regionalized Contributions

The Challenges Annual Forum 2013 was hosted in Argentina on 5-7 December by the Argentinean Ministry of Defense in cooperation with the Armed Forces Joint Staff and CAECOPAZ.

The Challenges Forum 2013 addressed the theme of Strengthening UN Peace Operations: Modalities and Opportunities for Regionalized Contributions. Through a series of panel sessions and working groups, the Forum explored how regional capacities can best support and strengthen UN peace operations.

The aim was to determine what conditions and capacities are required for regionalized contributions to effectively support UN peace operations. The objective was also to draw on the experiences of regionalized contributions in relation to thematic issues and identify what best practices can be discerned and of relevance for the broader civil, military and police peace operations community.

The Forum focused on the following four areas:

• experiences of regionalized contributions
• enhancing operational readiness of regional contributions
• defining common concepts and doctrine development requirements.

More than 100 participants from 22 countries took part in the meeting.