Strengthening a Rights-Based Approach to United Nations Peace Operations

Introduction

During a July 2020 open debate the United Nations (UN) Security Council highlighted the crucial roles human rights play in peace operations, including by providing early warning of issues or problems, supporting good offices, improving the protection of civilians, strengthening national rule-of-law capacities, ensuring due diligence/compliance for military operations, leading a range of protection-related activities and supporting efforts to protect political space in fragile settings. Despite this recognition of the important role of human rights, there has been relatively little research into how human rights support the implementation of the mandates of a range of peace operations, leaving the evidence base for understanding the contribution of human rights to peace operations very thin.

The purpose of this policy brief is to chart out key complexities linked to operationalising a rights-based approach to peace operations. It identifies and introduces critical challenges to mandate implementation through specific themes, including the contribution of human rights to the protection of civilians, stabilisation mandates, smaller-footprint field offices, the political work of special envoys and mission transitions.

The paper examines both theoretical and operational aspects of human rights in peace operations. In line with the High-Level Independent Panel on Peace Operations report (2015), it discusses human rights considerations in relation to a range of UN peace operations, including peacekeeping and special political missions, regional prevention offices, and special envoys. The first section locates human rights components and concerns across a spectrum of UN peace operations, comparing how human rights contribute to a wide range of peace and security engagements. The second section highlights several challenges to realising human rights aims and objectives in field missions. The final section proposes a series of questions that warrant further discussion to elucidate and support a rights-based approach to peace operations that could help to respond to the call in the New Agenda for Peace for a reflection on the limits and future of UN peacekeeping and other ongoing policymaking within the UN system. The paper illustrates that in order to support the UN’s recommitment to its core principles and human rights pillar, there is a need for greater attention to the ways that human rights can support the analysis and strategic positioning of UN peace operations.