UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations

Ambassador Kacou Houadja Léon Adom of the Ivory Coast, Dec. 3, 2018. He said that his country, recovering from a civil war, had lessons to offer the UN Security Council on how to maintain peace. 
The Ivory Coast holds the rotating presidency in December in the United Nations Security Council at a pivotal point in its membership in the world body. The West African country was elected to its current term in the Council just as the last peacekeeping troops left in 2017, ending the UN’s presence there after a civil war that devastated the country for 15 years.

A trip by the members of the UN Security Council, above background, to the Congo in October 2018 included meeting with female political candidates (front rows) who are competing in the country’s Dec. 23 elections. Recent murders of UN peacekeepers in the Congo raise the question as to whether the Council is clear on the consequences of peacekeepers becoming parties to a conflict. MICHAEL ALI/Monusco

A memorial service was held for the six peacekeepers from Malawi and one from Tanzania who died during clashes with the ADF militia in the Congo on Nov. 15, 2018. Seventeen members of the same UN force intervention brigade were killed nearly a year ago battling the ADF. MIRIAM ASMANI/MONUSCO 
United Nations peacekeepers working for the mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo were killed by a militia in a jungle in North Kivu Province on Nov. 15, leaving seven soldiers dead: six Malawians and one Tanzanian. Ten were injured.