The Role of UN Peace Operations in Countering Health Insecurity after COVID‐19

Alexander Gilder

doi:10.1111/1758-5899.13056

Abstract

AbstractThis Policy Insight suggests the UN must account for a diverse range of conflict drivers, including health insecurity, and that UN peace operations can play a role in countries of deployment to counter health crises. Insecurity is experienced in a variety of different ways in a complex world where threats are multifaceted. COVID‐19 is merely the latest health crisis which has impacted populations around the globe in both developed and developing countries. However, UN peace operations have not typically played a major role in addressing health insecurity nor have they undergone any major shifts in their focus to provide direct health‐related assistance during the COVID‐19 pandemic. With health insecurity likely to persist, there should not need to be a global pandemic for the UN Security Council to use peace operations to undertake further preventative work in this area.

Highlights

E UN Security Council to use peace operations to undertake further preventative work in this area
The UN Security Council has focused the UN’s peace operations primarily on responding to physical security threats linked to violence
Health insecurity was prevalent before COVID-19 and encompasses many diseases and failures of public health services that affect vulnerable populations

Summary

H E ALT H I N S ECU R I T Y

Security crises can take many forms. The UN has a multitude of violent, environmental, economic, health crises and more, to contend with through its many organs. Despite UN peace operations having not primarily concerned themselves with the broad facets of human security such as environmental degradation, infectious diseases, or economic harm there may be scope for states to support UN peace operations undertaking activities in these areas (Gilder, 2022) This approach would recognise that international responses to insecurity must go beyond both a focus on violence and on the reestablishment of national security. Security Council declared that the ‘unprecedented extent of the Ebola outbreak in Africa constitutes a threat to international peace and security’ and called on governments to provide assistance with the outbreak (UN, 2014c) This was the first time that the Security Council took a major leadership role during a public health crisis (Davies & Rushton, 2016). While physical protection can be what is immediately needed to provide the necessary environment for peacebuilding to take place there is a difficult relationship between peacebuilding and the current stabilization mandates that robustly pursue physical protection. Curran and Hunt (2020, p. 59) explain:

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