Peacekeeping and peacebuilding

Since the end of the cold war, peacekeeping and peacebuilding issues have been core elements of the work of the Armed Conflict and Conflict Management Programme. The project collects data on all ongoing multilateral peace operations, surveys the significant shifts in trends in multilateral peace operations and considers their impact on current policy issues for international efforts in post-conflict peacebuilding. Themes examined in depth include the efforts to develop and enhance the institutional capacities of the United Nations and of regional organizations in crisis management operations, the financial costs of operations, and issues of legitimacy and transparency. The project also studies specific peacebuilding tasks such as the rule of law and transitional justice.

Analysis is confined to peace operations that are conducted under the authority of the UN, of regional organizations and/or by ad hoc coalitions of states sanctioned by the UN. The project produces an annual chapter that discusses the main developments and challenges, and an appendix which lists comprehensive data on all the multilateral peace operations reviewed for the SIPRI Yearbook.

The project partners and collaborates with a number of institutes. In particular, SIPRI is a contributing partner of data on non-UN operations to:

• the Center on International Cooperation's Annual Review of Global Peace Operations
• the ISIS Europe Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) Map

and is a member of:

• the EU COST Action Network New Challenges of Peacekeeping and the European Union's Role in Multilateral Crisis Management

SIPRI Map of Multilateral Peace Operation Deployments

  (To download the full PDF, click here)

Research Issues

SIPRI Multilateral Peace Operations Database

Rule of law and transitional justice in post-conflict peacebuilding

The civilian contribution to peace operations

The role of the military in humanitarian assistance (closed)