Answer: United Nations Peacekeeping is a joint effort between its Department of Peace Operations and the Department of Operational Support. Every peacekeeping mission is authorized by the Security Council and forces are contributed by member states on a voluntary basis. Peacekeeping is one of the most effective tools in the promotion and maintenance of international peace and security owing to its unique strengths such as legitimacy, burden sharing, deployment of troops around the world and integrating them with civilian peacekeepers to enforce various multidimensional mandates. However, the physical and political fragility of conflict situations limit the likelihood of success. Peacekeeping faces several challenges that undermine its ability to deliver on its mandates:

• Change in nature of armed conflicts: The nature of conflicts has changed over the years, and peacekeeping, which originally emerged to deal with interstate conflicts, began to be applied to intrastate conflicts including civil wars, organized crime and new generation of weapons.
• Peacekeepers have become targets: Peacekeepers often go where no one else is prepared to go. However, incidents of attack on peacekeepers have become common.
• Elusive political solutions: With the closure of UNOCI and UNMIL, several missions are deployed in the face of weak political agreement, diminished consent and stalled peace processes with vague exit strategies.
• Broad and complex mandates: Peacekeeping missions have been given staggering tasks and wide-ranging responsibilities. At the same time, regional partnerships, though critical, are often unable to deliver the necessary political impact.
• Performance issues: There are challenges related to maintenance of well structured, equipped and trained forces, participation of women in peacekeeping, accountability for perpetrators of sexual exploitation and abuse and other forms of misconduct.
• Lack of stronger commitment: All the actors in support of peacekeeping efforts, from political to operational spheres, lack stronger commitment which is needed to achieve peacekeeping excellence.

The accomplishments from past missions have raised the expectations from UN peacekeeping beyond its capacity to deliver. To respond to these challenges, following reforms are needed:

• Institutionalization: Time has come to move from pursuit of activism of individual member states to collective action by the Council. There is a need for greater and effective cooperation between Troop Contributing Countries (TCCs), the Security Council and the Secretariat.
• Incentivization: As of July, 2019, women peacekeepers constituted 6 per cent. There is a need to provide special incentives for women peacekeepers and priority deployment of all women- unit pledges.
• Innovation: Innovation in capacity building of peacekeepers needs to be a priority. This can be done through innovative options such as co-deployment of peacekeepers, enhancing capabilities and capacities through Mobile Training Teams and expansion of online initiatives to develop capacities of future commanders and managers.
• Future proofing: There is further need of better training of peacekeepers and involvement of experts from various fields in peacekeeping in order to better deal with emerging challenges.

Peacekeeping has proven to be one of the most effective tools available to the UN to assist host countries navigate the difficult path from conflict to peace. In this regard, the Secretary-General has launched Action for Peacekeeping (A4P) to renew mutual political commitment to peacekeeping operations and called on Member States to join in developing a set of mutually-agreed principles and commitments to create peacekeeping operations fit for the future.