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An overview of UN regulation on technology in

Peacekeeping Operations

By Capt. Vito FRANCHINI

Late in June 2014, an Expert Panel on Technology and Innovation in UN Peacekeeping took place
under the umbrella of the UN Under-Secretaries-General of Peacekeeping Operations and Field
Support (DFS).
The task was clear: to discuss and
give rise to a number of
recommendations focused on
technology, as long as it might help
peacekeeping forces in fulfilling
their mandates.
Six months later, the final report
was officially issued. It stressed
several wide known concepts, going
straight to the beating heart of the
problems to be faced and giving a
clear frame to the issue: since the new millennium had begun, the world is facing a technological
revolution, favored by the global expansion of the internet. Innovation was (and is) everywhere but,
as a matter of fact, United Nation peacekeeping used to limp: “The gap the gap between what the
average peacekeeping mission does have and what it should have is so pronounced, that some of
the countries with the world’s most capable military and police forces have been reluctant to
participate in many of the more difficult and challenging peacekeeping operations” [from the
Report “Initial Summary”].
The main point to be understood, was that providing people deployed in the field of peacekeeping
with modern technology is not to be
considered a luxury. No mission can be
expected to guarantee peace and
security, or manage complex crisis,
without appropriate technology
enhancing operational effectiveness, in
every field.
From that moment on, modernization was
to be catalyzed and needed to become
standard part of each approach to a crisis.
The official final Report offered
recommendations and observations to
obtain an immediate growth of technology provided in the field and, afterwards, laid the foundation
of a strategy seeking to apply innovations on a continuous basis, as a part of each mandate
implementation. That strategy assigned an important and active part of “port of call” to Member
States, when soliciting particularly specialized technologies for different peacekeeping missions.

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