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injured or harmed, are civilians.
In 2000, the so-called “Brahimi Report”, and the corresponding United Nations Security Council
Resolution 1327, recommended that peace operations be given clear, credible and achievable
mandates and, where appropriate and within their mandates, a credible deterrent capability. Those
documents further recommended that the mandated tasks be appropriate to the situation on the
ground, including the potential need to protect civilians. In particular the Brahimi Report stressed
the relevance of capability of each potential troop contributor to meet the requisite United Nations
training and to have the equipment requirements for peacekeeping operations, prior to deployment.
At the same time the UNSC Resolution 1327 emphasized the importance for the Member States to
take the necessary and appropriate steps to ensure the capability of their peacekeepers to fulfil the
mandates assigned to them, underlining the importance of international cooperation in this regard,
including the training of the peacekeepers.
Since these first steps, the United Nations Security Council has increasingly focused on responding
to PoC challenges: accordingly, the Council has provided the missions with tougher and more
specific mandates,
including the support for
a robust peacekeeping as
a means to protect
civilians, and mandates
have become much more
focused on protecting
Indonesian peacekeepers in South Sudan
civilians as a key
priority.
Today protection
mandates are so broad
that they risk losing
focus: current protection
expectations span a wide
range of protection areas,
including sexual and gen- UNHCR aids in Erbil, Iraq
der-based violence
(SGBV), conflict-related sexual violence, violence against children, environmental and health
protection, and the breadth of human rights abuses. Altogether, with increasingly ambitious PoC
mandates for missions presenting peacekeepers with ever-more complicated protection challenges,
the international community displays an underwhelming ability to protect. In that regard,
notwithstanding the many other factors impacting the ability to ensure effective PoC, pre-
deployment training has emerged as essential key-element of ensuring that Peacekeepers arrive in
mission with, at the very least, the basic skills required to work in an international environment. For
protection tasks specifically, training in behavioral, social, and attitudinal skills, as well as other
relevant skills and tools such as intelligence and communication, are absolutely necessary to
ensuring that peacekeeping personnel are equipped to interact with vulnerable people and at-risk
populations and that through that interaction are able to provide appropriate protection. This is
particularly the case in the contemporary peacekeeping landscape where conflicts are often
protracted, take place in “normal” environments (villages, schools) and the boundaries between war

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