Partnership Peacekeeping Works: What Does this Mean in a Divided World?

In a 2015 report, then-Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon remarked that the United Nations (UN) had “entered an era of partnership peacekeeping.” And, indeed, in the past three decades, the UN has frequently and in various modes of cooperation conducted peacekeeping in partnership with regional organizations, ad-hoc coalitions of states, and even single member states. Despite many challenges inherent in this inter-organizational cooperation, CSS' Corinne Bara and Maurice P. Schumann find that parallel deployments of UN and partner missions are effective in curbing battle violence—more effective than peacekeeping by any actor alone. This raises important questions about the role the UN will play in the global partnership for peacekeeping in the near future.