A World at War: Analysing Decline in Multilateral Peacekeeping and Impact: Conversations with Dr Jaïr Van der Lijn

SOURCE : SIPRI MAY 2026

The International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers on 29 May saw multiple activities at various missions around the world honouring UN Peacekeepers.  SIPRI published a Report covering the broader contours of peacekeeping to include Multi-Lateral missions including the UN.

Titled, “Developments and Trends In Multilateral Peace Operations, 2025,” the Report concludes that, “The outlook for multilateral conflict management is not good. Less conflict management may lead to more conflict, while reduced adherence to normative frameworks may lead to more severe conflicts”. This comes even as there is a distinct outcome visible in the past few years that the World is at war from Europe to the Middle East and beyond multiple conflicts are raging leading to deaths and injuries beyond the core fighting zone.

To understand how far this is the outcome of a reduction in commitment to Multi Lateral Peacekeeping we held a conversation with Dr Jaïr Van der Lijn co-author of the report on Zoom on June 01. Here is a summary of the dialogue.

One of the concerns in reduction of multilateral peacekeeping is a decrease in the UN missions, one factor is decline in funding commitments by the member states leading to a liquidity crisis in the UN Peacekeeping. However, this was not the main cause per se as Dr Jair explained lack of consensus in the UN Security Council as well as amongst conflict stakeholders was also a reason for the same.  

This was an era of a New Cold War as per Dr Jair stating that big powers had lost the appetite for building consensus for resolution of conflicts.

This had led in some cases adhoc groups to arise as alternatives.  SIPRI Multilateral Peace Operations data Base visualization for 2026 shows that in 2025 there were 18 UN Peacekeeping Missions, 34 by Regional Organisations and 6 by adhoc coalition of states.

Willingness of parties to seek mediation through active peacekeeping had also gone down.

The role of external players in conflicts had increased for instance in Sudan the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) representing the Sudanese state was actively, backed by Egypt, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia while the opponent Rapid Support Forces (RSF) that evolved from the former Janjaweed militias by the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The participation of multiple stakeholders in some of these conflicts and intervention by Private Military Companies [PMC] and bilateral operations by Uganda and Burundi in the DRC has also led to a worrying trend of decline in acceptance of humanitarian law leading to larger civilian casualties.

Dr Jair recommended that the UN needs to set such norms for operations where diverse forces are involved in attempting to resolve conflict including PMC.

To the question of whether difficulties faced by missions as the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) in the ongoing Israel operations in Lebanon is a deterrent for UN missions, Dr Jair felt that the UNIFIL in the larger context had succeeded in its mission of, “Monitoring violati0ons of resolution 1701, supporting the restoration of state authority, and helping ensure humanitarian access,” over the years.

Missions such as these however cannot succeed in case one of the conflict parties or one of the P5 do not support it. UNFIL faces problems as a peacekeeping mission cannot continue in face of a UNSC veto and is never able to resist an armed attack by a force like the Israel Defence Force. Despite the complexities it goes to the UN peacekeeping contributing nations such as India continue to provide troops to the Mission.

On being queried over possibility of deploying a peacekeeping mission in Ukraine if and as and when such an opportunity arose Dr Jair highlighted the complexities in such a mission and the force that could be employed.

United Nations was one option while the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) another, but much will depend on the stance of Russian leadership and thus the possibility and role of such a mission remains to be seen.

On Dr Jair’s query on the likelihood of deploying multilateral missions in Asia, it was highlighted that apart from the Middle East, states in Asia do not have the appetite or the capacity for long drawn-out wars despite the intensity of rivalries.

Most of the countries were developing economies and a war will upset the development paradigm causing severe distress, thus the status quo was preferred over escalation.

Yet there were many frozen conflicts such as on the Korean Peninsula or occasional skirmishing as between India and Pakistan, Pakistan and Afghanistan and Thailand and Cambodia or the civil war in Myanmar which were a cause of concern.

Overall, the larger context of a decline in commitment to support conflict management through multilateral peace keeping was clear from the discourse as well as SIPRI’s seminal study.