ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the opportunities and challenges that new technologies harbor for UN peacekeeping operations. It looks at the issue of partnerships, both within the United Nations (UN) and between the UN and other actors. UN peacekeeping needs intelligence capabilities in the shape of surveillance drones, community alert networks, partnerships with crisis-mappers and many other innovations that new technologies can bring. The UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) is a perfectly good example of a mission that has a lot of modern technologies and troop contributions from a range of Western states, while still being a traditional peacekeeping operation. Finally, the chapter considers doctrinal implications of these technological advances in contemporary peace operations and concludes with some recommendations for how to move forward. New technologies can indirectly have an unfortunate impact on doctrinal development at the UN, pointing UN peacekeeping in a direction of offensive operations.
