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Herves Ladous, U.N. Undersecretary general for the Department of Peacekeeping Operations( DPKO), to Foreign Policy Magazine.

In every mission there is a tension between the necessity to preserve the consent and good will of the host government required to allow our peacekeepers to do their jobs and the sometimes contradictory imperative to report accurately and candidly on any and all incidents of violence. Many times our mission leadership is under a tremendous amount of pressure to stay inside the tent with regard to our relationship with local authorities. Bad relations with any host government can make it impossible for a mission to operate--to move around the country, to have their equipment cleared by national customs, to deploy new personnel. So this is a legitimate conundrum with which mission leadership must wrestle in every context. With regard to UNAMID, it is no secret that the relationship with the Government has always been challenging from the inception of the Mission. We report on this on a regular basis and have called on both the UN and the AU Councils to weigh in on certain issues. That is why in this context, we have undertaken a strategic review, which assesses the Mission's performance in an environment in which new conflict dynamics have emerged and old ones remain unaddressed. It identifies the main challenges the Mission faces in the implementation of the mandate, namely cooperation of the Government in mandate implementation, internal managerial and coordination issues, especially with the Country Team, and capabilities of our troops and police contributors. The report recommends a number of measures to address these and critically, provides for a period in which to implement them and assess their effect. At the end of that period, the effectiveness of the Mission will be re-evaluated and, depending on the results, adjustments will be made to the mandate and authorized strength. It also suggests a more focused strategic direction with three central priorities: the mediation between the Government and non-signatory armed movements, protection of civilians and the support to the mediation of community conflict. With this review we are committed to improving the performance of the Mission, focusing on the political processes with the armed groups and on local conflict to address the root causes and conflict drivers.

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