By Bulbul Ahmed | The Conversation
November 13, 2025 at 9:00 AM EST
This article is republished from The Conversation, an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts. Bulbul Ahmed is a PhD Candidate at the University of Iowa; Bangladesh University of Professionals.
For decades, the United Nations has intervened in Haiti in a bid to address persistent political, economic and security crises. To date, all attempts have failed.
Now, the international body is trying something new. On Sept. 30, 2025, the United Nations Security Council approved an expanded international military force for Haiti in hopes of turning the tide against organized criminal gangs that have taken hold of swaths of the Caribbean nation.
Resolution 2793 authorized the doubling of U.N.-backed military and police forces to more than 5,000 and transforming the Kenya-led Multinational Security Support mission in place since 2023 into a new Gang Suppression Force.
Operational command of the mission will now be held by a coalition of nations including Kenya, Canada, Jamaica, the Bahamas, El Salvador, Guatemala and the United States. Meanwhile, the U.N. will provide logistical, administrative and political assistance through the newly established U.N. Support Office in Haiti.
Yet the true significance of Resolution 2793 lies not in its military content or its specific application in Haiti, but rather in its institutional design.
As a scholar of international peace operations, I see this as a major shift in how the U.N. exerts authority. The organization’s legitimacy now rests less on commanding troops directly and more on coordinating coalitions. In an era of constrained budgets and fragmented global power, the United Nations increasingly sees its strength in its ability to confer legitimacy and structure collaboration among coalitions of states, regional organizations and international nongovernmental organizations.
The logic of adaptation
At one time, U.N. peacekeeping symbolized the collective will of nations deployed across the world under a unified command.
Beginning formally in 1956 with the deployment of the first U.N. Emergency Force during the Suez Crisis, peacekeeping operations were conceived as neutral forces positioned between warring parties to monitor ceasefires and buffer zones.
Traditional missions deployed tens of thousands of troops wearing distinctive blue helmets, all under direct U.N. command. Field commanders reported to United Nations headquarters in New York through a clear chain of authority.
At their peak in the 1990s and 2000s, the U.N. ran dozens of these operations simultaneously – from Cambodia to Mozambique and the Balkans – with mandates to separate combatants, disarm militias and support peace agreements after civil wars. Some succeeded in ending long-running conflicts, but others became mired in situations where there was no peace to keep.
U.N. missions such as those in Haiti from 2004 to 2017 and in the Democratic Republic of Congo from 2010 to the present reflected an era when member states were willing to finance large, multilateral deployments under one flag.
But that model has become harder to sustain.
Over time, U.N. peacekeeping has had to confront not only conventional conflicts but also transnational and urban violence, organized crime and fragile governance – problems that stretched beyond its original design.
Compounding those challenges in recent years has been deep polarization on the U.N. Security Council. Conflicts ranging from Syria to Ukraine have exposed divisions that constrain the authorization of new large-scale missions. Meanwhile, peacekeeping budgets have plateaued as major contributing countries have drawn back funding amid domestic political pressures, and many traditional troop contributors have grown cautious about costly, open-ended deployments.
The United Nations has had to evolve in a number of ways.
Haiti’s most recent multinational security support mission already departed from the classical design.
When the Kenya-led operation was authorized in 2023, it was funded entirely through voluntary contributions from willing countries, not the regular U.N. budget that all member nations pay into.
lire le texte au complet ici : The UN is reinventing peacekeeping – Haiti is the testing ground | WLRN