The Security Council backed reforms today to reduce inefficiencies, corruption and abuse in the UN's far-flung peacekeeping operations, a key priority of the Trump administration at the UN General Assembly.
Vice President Mike Pence cast the approval vote for the United States, saying the UN must be more aggressive in evaluating the effectiveness of its operations.
He said all peacekeeping missions must be deployed in a support of a political solution to conflicts and have exit strategies.
"In short, when a mission succeeds, we must not prolong it. When a mission underperforms, we should restructure it. And when a mission consistently fails to fulfil a mandate of this council, we should end it," Pence said.
While many peacekeeping missions have been hailed as successful, Sierra Leone most recently, others have been criticised for sexual abuse violations and corruption, especially the Central African Republic and Congo. The joint UN-African Union mission in Sudan's Darfur region has been widely criticised for inefficiency.
An Associated Press investigative series on the UN's peacekeeping crisis uncovered roughly 2,000 allegations of sexual abuse and exploitation during a 12-year period. It found that the UN often lost track of the victims and that only a fraction of the perpetrators were held accountable.
Adding to the challenges the changing nature of conflicts around the world. Often the main players are rebel groups and fighters who act outside of international law, rather than conflicts between different countries. As a result, UN peacekeepers have increasingly been killed, injured or kidnapped.
The Security Council asked for annual briefings from UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on his initiative to reform peacekeeping.
Guterres shares US concerns that peacekeeping missions often get bogged down in ever-evolving conflicts with insufficient resources or an adequate political strategy.
But the Trump administration stoked alarm in the U.N. with a proposal to cut US funding for UN peacekeeping by USD 1.3 billion, over 50 per cent. The United States currently pays 28.57 per cent of the peacekeeping budget, nearly triple the second-largest contributor, China.
UN officials have pushed back on the idea that its peacekeeping operations are not cost-efficient. Guterres pointed to 55 operations that have wrapped up over the years, achieving peace in countries around the world.
UN peacekeeping operations, which number 16 with more than 100,000 personnel, cost nearly USD 8 billion a year. The UN has said that, adjusting for inflation, the cost to member states has decreased by 17 per cent in the past decade when measured as cost per capital of deployed uniformed personnel.
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