GPPi presents new book on peace operations at Peking University

On November 21, at an event hosted by Peking University, GPPi Co-Founder and Associate Director Thorsten Benner introduced the new GPPi book The New World of UN Peace Operations: Learning to Build Peace?, co-authored by Stephan Mergenthaler and Philipp Rotmann and published by Oxford University Press in June 2011. The event, titled ​“UN Peace Operations: Challenges and Opportunities” was chaired by Zhang Haibin, professor and director of the Center for International Organization Studies at Peking University.

Building on an innovative multi-disciplinary framework, The New World of UN Peace Operations provides a first comprehensive account of learning in UN peacekeeping. Covering the crucial past decade of expansion in peace operations, it zooms into a dozen cases of attempted learning across four crucial domains: police assistance, judicial reform, reintegration of former combatants and mission integration.

In his presentation, Benner emphasized the need for China to become seriously engaged in peacekeeping reform. This should also include efforts to enhance the learning capacity of the UN as well as improve the human resources system, which remains one of the major weaknesses of the UN peace operations apparatus.