U.S. President Barack Obama announced on Monday more than 50 countries have pledged some 40,000 peacekeepers for possible deployment on United Nations missions, as well as helicopters, medical units and training and equipment to deal with roadside bombs.Obama chaired a summit of world leaders at the United Nations to garner commitments to boost the capacity and capabilities of U.N. peacekeeping and to allow the world body to deploy forces more rapidly if a new operation is created.”Our goal should be to make every new peace operation more efficient and more effective than the last,” Obama said.The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, said in addition to some 40,000 new troops and police, more than 50 countries had pledged to provide more than 40 helicopters, 15 military engineering companies and 10 field hospitals. The pledges represent a major boost to UN peacekeeping, which relies on voluntarycontributions from member states to run its 16 missions worldwide. Pakistan has consistently been among the top contributors of troops to UN peacekeeping missions and many of them are working in most difficult environment. It is the second largest contributor with 8,163 personnel including 7,581 troops, 487 police officials and 95 military experts serving in the UN operations. Pakistan has lost the third most soldiers in UN peacekeeping operations, with 137 soldiers killed. That speaks volume of Pakistan’s contributions towards world peace. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif pledged to contribute aninfantry battalion, transport, engineering and signals companies, helicopters, field hospitals and other equipment for thepeace keeping operations. The need of the time is that international community should continue collective efforts to strengthen the United Nations for its enhanced role in peace keeping as the world is witnessing disputes and conflicts in every region. Improving global peacekeeping efforts will require active participation but there is also need to identify the powers and groups that are financing and arming different groups. Unless and until that is strictly checked, and brought under control, the world will not see peace and the poor people would continue to die in fighting or in high seas being witnessed every day as they flee from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and African countries and begging refuge in Europe.
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