The Quiet Erosion of Multilateral Peace Operations

By Dr. İpek İpek

Over the past decade, multilateral peace operations have undergone a silent contraction, losing more than 40 percent of their deployed personnel. This is not just a statistical decline—it signals a deeper transformation in how the international community confronts organized violence.

At the close of 2024, just 94,451 personnel were deployed across 61 operations in 36 countries. A decade ago, that figure stood at over 161,000. The arithmetic alone is sobering. But the real story lies beneath the numbers: a fundamental retreat from the multilateral ethos that once anchored collective security.

Geography of Retreat

The spatial distribution of these missions reveals uncomfortable truths. Sub-Saharan Africa continues to absorb nearly three-quarters of all peacekeeping personnel, reflecting both the region’s disproportionate conflict burden and the global community’s selective attention. Europe, despite a war raging in Ukraine, hosts fewer than 9,000 peacekeepers. Meanwhile, the Americas saw a 120 percent uptick—largely due to the delayed and tepid response to Haiti’s unraveling.

These deployments reflect the broader fragmentation of international cooperation. The UN Security Council—once a symbol of postwar optimism—has not authorized a single major new mission in the past decade. This isn’t bureaucratic inertia; it’s institutional paralysis cloaked in deliberation. Consider Haiti. Conversations around international support began in 2022. Yet, deployment under the Multinational Security Support Mission didn’t materialize until mid-2024—well after the situation had deteriorated beyond recognition.

The Financial Unraveling

The financial architecture of peacekeeping is also buckling. The UN peacekeeping budget faces what officials diplomatically call a “liquidity crisis.” Major contributors like the United States and China are delaying or withholding payments—not out of negligence, but by design. Strategic disengagement now masquerades as fiscal discipline.

Budgetary priorities in Washington and Brussels have shifted toward national defense and border security. Development aid is shrinking, and peacekeeping missions are increasingly expected to do more with less—or simply to disappear. When the Southern African Development Community’s mission in Mozambique ran out of funds in July 2024, there was no public outcry, no diplomatic rethinking—just quiet closure. The bureaucracy moved on. Civilians did not.

False Alternatives

In this vacuum, other actors have stepped in—most notably, private military companies. Yet the promise of rapid, decisive intervention has not materialized. Mali’s turn to Wagner Group mercenaries after the UN’s departure has coincided with expanding insurgent control and worsening civilian conditions. In the Democratic Republic of Congo and Somalia—countries that previously demanded UN withdrawals—governments are now asking for extensions. These reversals are telling. Despite its flaws, no viable substitute has emerged for multilateral operations.

This leads to a central paradox: governments often resent foreign intervention, yet fear the consequences of its absence. Host state ambivalence is understandable, rooted in questions of sovereignty and efficacy. But when peacekeepers leave, armed groups inevitably fill the void—and civilians pay the price.

The Changing Guard

Patterns of personnel contributions also reflect shifting global dynamics. Nepal, Bangladesh, and India remain the top military contributors. Western nations are notably absent from frontline deployments, preferring rhetoric to responsibility. This isn’t just about sharing the burden; it’s about who still believes in the project of multilateralism. Increasingly, the Global South supplies the troops, while the Global North disengages—even from the discourse.

What Comes Next

Looking ahead, the trajectory is clear: multilateral peace operations will continue to contract. The budgets are shrinking. The political will is eroding. And while these missions may persist in a reduced form, their capacity to shape outcomes in times of crisis is rapidly diminishing.

This may not be catastrophic in the traditional sense. Great powers have always relied on bilateral arrangements and ad hoc alliances to manage instability. But it marks the end of an era—the slow, quiet dismantling of a vision that once promised collective responsibility for global peace.

What replaces this vision may be faster or more “efficient,” but it will almost certainly be less fair. The world’s most vulnerable populations—those without powerful patrons or geopolitical relevance—will bear the brunt of this transition.

The SIPRI data does more than document personnel shifts. It captures an institutional reckoning disguised as fiscal tightening. Whether this becomes a moment of strategic adaptation or the final chapter in multilateral peacekeeping depends not on the failures of the past, but on what emerges in its place.

So far, the alternatives offer little reason for optimism.