Role of United Nations Peacekeeping Missions in the Protection of Civilians

Overview

Since 1999, UN peacekeeping missions have been explicitly mandated to protect civilians under threat in the countries where they are deployed. However, there remains a significant degree of confusion amongst soldiers and civilians deployed in peacekeeping missions about what exactly their civilian protection mandate entails. Oxfam expects military and civilian staff deployed as part of a peacekeeping mission with a protection mandate to respond as a matter of priority and urgency to any threat of violence, coercion or deliberate deprivation to the civilian population.