23.06.2025

Berlin 2025 and the politics of peacekeeping

Berlin’s 2025 Ministerial sought to rethink peacekeeping. Familiar patterns persisted—but space for broader, more inclusive dialogue is beginning to open.

 

This May, Berlin hosted the UN Peacekeeping Ministerial – the fifth such inter-governmental Ministerial related to peacekeeping since 2015. It took place at a time of decreasing multilateral peace and security responses, despite rising instability and intensifying crises across the globe, including in Gaza, Sudan, and Ukraine. While past Ministerials have traditionally functioned as pledging events, this Ministerial was designed to spark a more substantive political debate to address some of these larger challenges. It is not clear that these ambitions were fully met – the final conclusions in terms of pledging patterns (and gaps) tended to mirror those of past Ministerials. Yet this year’s Ministerial mobilized unprecedented high-level participation, including over 130 delegations and more than 60 foreign and defense ministers, as well as a much broader array of participants from academia and civil society. This broader participation, and new efforts to bring in substantive issues, did introduce a different tone, which may yet prove important in furthering discussions about the future of peacekeeping. 

 

Global crises and institutional paralysis: The political backdrop to Berlin 2025

The Peacekeeping Ministerial took place at an interesting point in time: Just one day before its start, the UN Secretary-General announced plans to reduce UN staffing by up to 20 per cent, including in the Department of Peace Operations. It also came at a time when the international community is struggling to uphold its commitment to peace in a number of regions and issues. Peacekeeping is a particular illustration of this. Although there is no shortage of conflict triggers and escalation in the global landscape, the political space for UN peacekeeping has shrunk dramatically. No new peacekeeping missions have been established in nearly a decade, and existing operations face mounting political, financial, and operational challenges.

Divisions within the Security Council over how peace operations should be mandated, and whether they warrant robust resourcing in certain contexts, are partly to blame for this. But even where the Security Council has authorized missions, implementation has often fallen short. In Somalia, for example, the African Union Somalia Mission (AUSSOM) was formally established in January 2025 as a regionally-led successor to the African Union Transition Mission in Somalia (ATMIS). However, efforts to implement a hybrid funding model involving UN-assessed contributions have stalled. In Haiti, Kenya's deployment of personnel to lead the Multinational Security Support mission, which was authorized by the Security Council in 2023, was a key milestone. Yet the mission has remained underfunded and too limited in scope to meaningfully alter the trajectory of violence. These examples underscore the persistent gap between multilateral commitments and the practical support required to translate them into effective responses on the ground.

As of mid-2025, the UN maintains 11 active peacekeeping missions and several special political missions. A substantial body of research confirms that peacekeeping can be effective in reducing violence, protecting civilians, and supporting political transitions, provided missions are adequately mandated and resourced. However, many are grappling with financial shortfalls, overstretched mandates, and growing scrutiny over their long-term effectiveness. These conditions are becoming ever more difficult to meet, given mounting arrears, which now exceed $2.7 billion, placing the UN’s peace and security architecture under significant financial strain.

Moreover, in the weeks before the conference, the United States, which was formerly responsible for some 27 per cent of the peacekeeping budget, announced drastic budget cuts to its UN commitments. While the U.S. delegation was present in Berlin, it did not announce any new pledges, setting a high bar coming into the Berlin Peacekeeping Ministerial, while other donors, including Germany, have made clear that they will not be able to fully compensate for any decline in U.S. funding.

At a deeper level, these gaps point to political questions about the role of peacekeeping in the current multilateral order, and whether there is sufficient political will for collective action. The politics of peacekeeping is not only about how missions are designed and delivered, but also about whether they are supported at all, and what that says about the state of multilateralism today.

 

Old wine, new bottle?

Since 2016, five Peacekeeping Ministerials have taken place, following the 2015 Leaders' Summit on Peacekeeping convened by the United States. Originally designed as a platform for generating pledges of personnel, equipment, and funding, these meetings have increasingly become entangled with broader debates about the future of UN peacekeeping, including questions of burden-sharing and mission effectiveness. Against this backdrop, Germany used its role as host in 2025 to push the Ministerial beyond its traditional format, introducing structured policy discussions on reform and future directions. At that time, it launched the Global Alliance for Peace Operations, a network of over 50 research institutes, academic institutions, and civil society organizations, and formally included two German UN Youth Delegates in its delegation. Both moves were deliberate efforts to inject policy substance into the proceedings and expand the range of actors shaping the peacekeeping discourse. However, despite the effort to introduce a more political layer to the debate, the end results suggest that the 2025 Ministerial mirrored its predecessors, and functioned primarily as a pledging conference.

The timing of the Ministerial might have offered a strategic window for a more in-depth discussion on structural reforms. Held just months ahead of the forthcoming Review on the Future of All Peace Operations, which is a process intended to assess the current landscape of UN peace and security engagements and outline the UN’s strategic direction in the years ahead, the Ministerial could have been well placed to connect short-term pledging with longer-term reform. However, direct references to the review were limited, and links between national pledges and the broader policy process were, if at all, only addressed on the sidelines of the meeting.

In addition, the pledges that were made suggest another concerning pattern in terms of maintaining the status quo, reinforcing an unequal division of labor or burden-sharing: Global South countries committed to sending new or upgraded troop and police units, while Global North countries focused on financial, logistical, and training support. Germany itself is an illustration of this: while it remains a top financial contributor to UN peacekeeping, providing technical support and training to troop-contributing countries, its uniformed presence in the field – like that of many of its European partners -   remains modest: with 194 personnel deployed across UN missions, Germany currently ranks 40th among the UN’s troop- and police-contributing countries

This long-standing and unequal division of labor in peacekeeping is increasingly at odds with calls for more equitable burden-sharing. Nations that deploy personnel often bear the greatest risks in the field but have historically limited influence in shaping mandates or directing missions. Indeed, militarily advanced states rarely contribute substantial numbers of their own troops, despite their capacity. Aside from China, no permanent member of the Security Council ranks among the UN’s top troop-contributing countries. The decline in Western troop contributions during the 1990s led the UN to rely more heavily on large-scale deployments from Asian and African countries, reinforcing the uneven distribution of risks and influence within UN peacekeeping, and ultimately reinforcing the established order of hierarchy of contributions. While this hierarchy may become less operationally relevant as large UN peacekeeping missions are phased out and fewer missions are newly mandated, the political dynamics it reflects continue to shape debates over responsibility equity, and the future of multilateral engagement — a dynamic that the Ministerial 2025 did not seek to challenge, or name explicitly.

 

Beyond Berlin: Sustaining political momentum

The 2025 Ministerial allowed Germany to set important signals: it used the platform to gain multilateral visibility, take initial steps toward a more inclusive dialogue, and present itself as a champion of effective multilateralism, in alignment with the themes of its campaign for a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council in 2027. But symbolism alone is not enough. If UN Member States aspire to shape the future of peacekeeping, they must be willing to engage more deeply with the structural contradictions of peacekeeping: the persistent gap between mandates and resources, the avoidance of uncomfortable debates, and the exclusion of actors with deep expertise but no formal seat at the table.  

One concrete step in this direction, and a good start, even if limited in its policy impact, was the implementation of the Global Alliance for Peace Operations. Looking ahead, involving a similarly broad range of stakeholders in the upcoming Review on the Future of All Peace Operations could represent an important innovation in how such processes are conducted. While the review is currently framed as an internal exercise, involving civil society, academia, and other independent actors could strengthen both its legitimacy and analytical depth. If pursued meaningfully, such engagement could also set a valuable precedent for future multilateral policymaking.

Ensuring that these openings translate into lasting reform, however, will require sustained political engagement beyond the Ministerial itself, particularly through diplomatic leadership and credible follow-up. This includes asking whether the pledges made at the Ministerial align with the operational needs of existing peacekeeping missions, and ensuring that independent voices, especially from civil society and academia, are empowered to raise such questions, and also questions regarding the follow-up on the implementation of pledges over time.

Yet momentum may prove difficult to sustain. The absence of a confirmed host for the next Ministerial adds to the broader sense of uncertainty. Berlin created an opening for more inclusive and strategic dialogue, but its significance will depend on what follows. Sustaining the relevance of peacekeeping will require more than rhetorical support. It will depend on renewed political will and a shared understanding of its continued necessity as a multilateral tool. Without that foundation, deeper structural reforms, such as changes in funding, mandate design, and implementation are unlikely to take root.

 

Author: Catharina Nickel, Research Officer, UNU Centre for Policy Research, New York