UNITED NATIONS (AP) – President Barack Obama on Monday announced notable steps to upgrade U.N peacekeeping, saying more than 50 countries have pledged to contribute more than 30,000 new troops and police to serve in some of the world’s most volatile areas.
But there was no sign the U.S., which pays a quarter of the peacekeeping budget, would put more of its own troops into the field.
The United States chaired a high-level meeting to strengthen and modernize peacekeeping, whose nearly 125,000 personnel increasingly face threats from extremist groups while being severely stretched in personnel and equipment. Deployments to crises can take several months.
And a series of sexual abuse allegations against peacekeepers has brought new concerns about a long-standing problem that Obama called “an affront to human decency.”
Obama’s presence at Monday’s meeting, shortly before his first face-to-face meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of an annual U.N. gathering of world leaders, was the latest sign of high-level U.S. interest in the issue.