Protection
Civilians expect peace operations to protect them. Efforts to strengthen the protection provided by peacekeeping operations are focused on building the capacity of the host country to fulfil their responsibility to protect civilians, promoting proactive efforts by peace operations at the strategic, operational and tactical levels to intervene when civilians are under threat, and ensuring there are effective strategic communications plans in place to support peace operations carry out their protection mandate. Key recommendations include:
- Apply an atrocity prevention lens. As part of their protection of civilians mandate, field missions should apply an atrocity prevention lens to ensure that early warning indicators for atrocities are considered as part of a conflict analysis at the earliest stages of mission planning, and that such analysis informs mission planning and resourcing.
- Increase understanding of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights Law. Member states deploying troops and police personnel and the UN Secretariat need to ensure that personnel deployed to peace operations thoroughly understand the application of International Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law through pre-deployment and in-mission training. Such training initiatives should include a focus on ensuring troops and police understand the interrelationship between legal considerations and tactical behaviour for field missions.