International Training of United Nations Peacekeepers

United Nations Peacekeepers are deployed to the world’s most troubled areas

           As of June 2026, there were over 50,000 United Nations Peacekeepers serving on 11 United Nations Peacekeeping missions in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Historically, UN Peacekeeping missions have been established in some of the world’s most troubled regions, and UN peacekeepers must be prepared to address issues of warfare, armed factions, mines, famine, humanitarian disasters, refugees, disease, and a collapse of civil infrastructure.

           Peacekeepers come from 114 nations and the 10 largest contributors of troops – men and women – who serve on peacekeeping missions are (in order) India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Rwanda, Pakistan, Indonesia, Ghana, China, Morocco, and Tanzania. Of the 50,816 deployed in June of 2026, 24 were Americans.

           How is it possible to train and prepare so many people, from so many different nations and cultures, serving on so many missions, to be ready for tasks as varied as military peacekeeping, protection of civilians, and humanitarian relief operations? It has been my honor to work with UN peacekeepers worldwide and to provide training to prepare them for their service.

The training of United Nations Peacekeepers

           Immediately before I joined the faculty at William & Mary, I was an American diplomat serving as a member of the US Delegation to the UN and based at the US Mission to the United Nations in New York. I reported to the US Ambassador to the UN, and my portfolio included several UN agenda items, including UN peacekeeping. I was the primary US working-level delegate representing the United States on the United Nations Committee on Peacekeeping Operations. As I met with diplomats from other nations, we all recognized that there was a growing need at that time to develop mechanisms for training UN peacekeepers. There were no standards for training. There was no training office in the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations, and the training of peacekeepers was left to each troop-contributing nation.

           Shortly after I joined the faculty at William & Mary, I was contacted by people at the UN and it was agreed I would establish a nonprofit with the purpose of providing e-learning for UN peacekeepers globally . I hired William & Mary undergrad and grad students part-time, and when they graduated I made them full-time employees of the nonprofit. I would travel to the UN often for meetings to ensure we were meeting the needs of the Department of Peacekeeping Operations. The nonprofit was not directly funded by the UN, but was an independent Williamsburg-based entity, recognized as a 501(c)(3) by the US Government. Funding came from ministries of foreign affairs of nations that were members of the UN and who recognized the need for e-learning for UN peacekeepers.

           Member nations of the UN also began to establish their own national peacekeeping training centers and I was invited to many of them and also to meetings at their ministries of foreign affairs. Interested nations also formed the International Association of Peacekeeping Training Centres (IAPTC) and I was an invited speaker at many of their annual meetings worldwide.

Training UN peacekeepers today with e-learning

        I eventually turned the operation over to a younger generation and an Executive Director I had mentored. Since 2020 the Peace Operations Training Institute (POTI) has provided an annual average of over 100,000 enrollments to 30,000 individual students from 181 nations. POTI offers 32 online courses in English, 24 in French, 18 in Spanish, 3 in Portuguese, and 1 in Arabic. The Partnership for E-learning on Peacekeeping (PELP), consisting of member nations of the UN and UN Secratrariat Departments, provides aegis and oversight as to how POTI operates. PELP meets twice each year and is chaired on a rotating basis by one of the UN member nations. POTI was nominated twice for the Nobel Peace Prize. My current role is as the Special Adviser to the POTI Board of Directors.