How digital is transforming UN peacekeeping

The busi­ness of war­fare isn’t the same as it was even a few years ago. Con­flict zones are now awash with data. Satel­lites, drones, radar sys­tems and long-range cam­eras pro­vide instant intel­li­gence, while war­ring fac­tions clash in cyber­space with their cam­paigns of dis­in­for­ma­tion. This trend is a con­cern for the Unit­ed Nations, giv­en that it devised its peace­keep­ing prac­tices in an ana­logue world.

That’s why its sec­re­tary-gen­er­al, António Guter­res, announced a new dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion strat­e­gy for the organisation’s mis­sions around the globe in August 2021. He acknowl­edged that the new tech­no­log­i­cal aspects of con­flict required the UN to change its peace­keep­ing cul­ture to improve its respon­sive­ness.  

A tran­si­tion of this nature in such a large enter­prise clear­ly can’t be achieved overnight. Indeed, the UN’s Depart­ment of Peace Oper­a­tions (DPO) – which is run­ning 12 mis­sions on which 87,000 peo­ple are cur­rent­ly deployed – has giv­en itself three years to put all the right sys­tems in place. Its plan to make full use of cloud tech­nol­o­gy is cru­cial, but it has also iden­ti­fied the skills and capa­bil­i­ties it will need to bring in and/or devel­op inter­nal­ly. 

Mark Dal­ton is lead­ing the imple­men­ta­tion plan for the DPO’s dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion. He observes that it’s “inher­ent­ly chal­leng­ing to take on some­thing like this. We’re con­tin­u­ous­ly seek­ing new ways to work more effec­tive­ly. We’re not only look­ing at tech­nol­o­gy; it’s an inte­grat­ed approach involv­ing peo­ple and process­es too.” 

He con­tin­ues: “This is a ques­tion of how we can help peace­keep­ers to imple­ment their com­plex and demand­ing man­dates. A pri­or­i­ty is to ensure that we have the right data and dig­i­tal archi­tec­ture in place.”

This UN must man­age the same kinds of prob­lems that affect count­less oth­er dig­i­tal­ly evolv­ing organ­i­sa­tions world­wide. These include com­plex man­age­ment struc­tures – the DPO relies on the sup­port of myr­i­ad mil­i­tary, police and civil­ian organ­i­sa­tions across its mem­ber states – and siloed data. It must also deal with con­flict­ing goals, since man­dates from the UN Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil aren’t always aligned with those of nation­al or local gov­ern­ments in war zones. 

In data we trust

Like many organ­i­sa­tions wish­ing to trans­form them­selves, the UN hopes that data will be the new glue. If all the data that’s pro­duced is col­lat­ed, stored and processed on one uni­fied sys­tem, it can become a pow­er­ful ana­lyt­i­cal tool.  

Nao­mi Miyashita, leader of the pol­i­cy plan­ning team at the DPO, devel­oped the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion strat­e­gy. She observes that peace­keep­ing mis­sions “receive and gen­er­ate a huge amount of infor­ma­tion. This all needs to be organ­ised coher­ent­ly, ratio­nal­ly and effi­cient­ly, so that we can have a com­mon oper­a­tional pic­ture. Our new plat­form will enable us to adopt a much more data-rich and evi­dence-dri­ven approach, decid­ing how we plan and exe­cute our man­dates and also how we report to the UN Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil.” 

It will be no mean feat for the DPO to become a dig­i­tal­ly advanced organ­i­sa­tion that can, say, accu­rate­ly pre­dict trou­ble spots, give patrols ear­ly warn­ings of like­ly attacks and counter dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paigns on var­i­ous, all while achiev­ing con­sis­ten­cy in record-keep­ing across its var­i­ous mis­sions. 

Jake Sher­man is senior direc­tor of pro­grammes at the Inter­na­tion­al Peace Insti­tute, an inde­pen­dent think-tank that works close­ly with the UN. He believes that the DPO can make some com­par­a­tive­ly straight­for­ward changes – for exam­ple, ensur­ing that peace­keep­ers are equipped with night-vision sys­tems – that will prove high­ly effec­tive. 

But he adds that oth­er aspects, such as ensur­ing “basic dig­i­tal flu­en­cy, which includes pro­vid­ing real-time inci­dent report­ing, are more dif­fi­cult. This trans­for­ma­tion requires a long-term com­mit­ment to recruit­ing staff with new skills and address­ing gaps in capa­bil­i­ty among the var­i­ous coun­tries’ con­tin­gents on deploy­ment.”

The UN is also keen to reduce the dis­par­i­ties among its peace­keep­ing units. Some, pro­vid­ed by rich devel­oped nations, have sophis­ti­cat­ed tech­nol­o­gy and data-rich capa­bil­i­ties, which means that boots on the ground aren’t even need­ed some­times. On the oth­er hand, staff in units pro­vid­ed by some devel­op­ing nations have nev­er even used an Excel spread­sheet before, keep­ing them very much in the ana­logue world of con­flict res­o­lu­tion.  

“We want to ensure that we’re putting in a sys­tem where­by we have coun­tries with the tech­nol­o­gy and capac­i­ty to train and sup­port coun­tries that don’t,” Miyashita says. “This should help to lev­el the play­ing field.”

New risks with digital shift

A key fac­tor that inevitably comes to the fore dur­ing dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tions is that of data gov­er­nance. The UN has its own data pro­tec­tion and pri­va­cy prin­ci­ples, which define what con­sti­tutes best prac­tice, but peace­keep­ing in a data-rich and con­nect­ed world presents sev­er­al new chal­lenges in this respect. 

Jane Esberg is a post­doc­tor­al fel­low work­ing on Prince­ton University’s Empir­i­cal Stud­ies of Con­flict project. She points out that, by their very nature, peace­keep­ing mis­sions require the UN to work with vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple. “Any attempt to inte­grate data will have to main­tain anonymi­ty and be sen­si­tive to con­text. Pro­tect­ing the pop­u­la­tions that peace­keep­ers are there to serve will be vital.”

Anoth­er risk for the UN to con­sid­er is that a new­ly cen­tralised dig­i­tal resource could become a tar­get in its own right. One of its chal­lenges will be to make the sys­tem open enough for data to be added and accessed by thou­sands of autho­rised per­son­nel, while at the same time secur­ing it against hack­ers.  

“Dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion will increase the attack sur­face as more hard­ware and soft­ware is con­nect­ed to the main net­work,” warns Dr Beyza Unal, deputy direc­tor of the inter­na­tion­al secu­ri­ty pro­gramme at Chatham House. “As the UN con­sid­ers apply­ing more data-dri­ven appli­ca­tions, it should also con­sid­er the pos­si­bil­i­ty of data poi­son­ing by mali­cious actors. This could cor­rupt mod­els that run on arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, for instance.” 

As with any oth­er dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion project, the human ele­ment can often be over­looked. The tal­ent required for these kinds of projects is in short sup­ply to the UN in most parts of the world, giv­en that the pri­vate sec­tor can gen­er­al­ly pay high­er salaries to attract the sharpest minds. 

But Paul O’Neill, senior research fel­low in mil­i­tary sci­ences at the Roy­al Unit­ed Ser­vices Insti­tute, believes that the DPO digi­ti­sa­tion project could prove attrac­tive to mem­bers of gen­er­a­tion Z. 

“It pro­vides mean­ing and pur­pose that could appeal to the expec­ta­tions of younger work­ers with a strong social con­science,” O’Neill says, although he admits that “whether it can attract enough for the ambi­tious agen­da it has set is anoth­er ques­tion. I also think the time­line is also too chal­leng­ing. Busi­ness­es that attempt­ed dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tions have not­ed that the bar­ri­ers to this are often more cul­tur­al than tech­no­log­i­cal.”

The suc­cess of the UN’s bold strat­e­gy will hinge on the sup­port that mem­ber states lend its data-dri­ven cause. Dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tions are already shap­ing con­flicts around the world. The hope is that they will shape peace­keep­ing as well.