BACKGROUND PAPER Enhancing Peace Operations’ Capacity to Face Threats Against Peacekeepers

Threat is what will hurt you. Risk is a combination of the likelihood of a threat-based incident occurring and the impact of that incident upon you. This paper considers human threat of violence, that is, security threat. Other natural or manmade hazards are outside the paper’s scope.

This paper addresses critical issues for the effective planning, conduct and evaluation of modern multidimensional peace operations. The paper deliberates on a number of present-day and emerging concerns, assesses risk and explores prevention and mitigation strategies to reduce risk to peacekeepers to acceptable levels. The intention of the paper is to establish a starting foundation for a discussion on enhancing peace operations’ capacity to face threats against peacekeepers.