Faced with growing threats from armed groups with connections to Al Qaida and the Islamic State, in 2017 a group of five countries in the Sahel region of Sub-Saharan Africa known as the G5 Sahel launched a joint force to counter terrorism in the region with backing from the UN Security Council. The G5 Joint Force - comprising Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger - is part of an emerging move away from traditional UN Peacekeeping operations to regional ones supported by the organization. While integration of human rights concerns has been taken on board by UN-led peace operations for 15 years, how these new types of operations can integrate human rights risks requires a new look. This talk with Chloé Marnay-Baszanger, Chief of the Peace Mission Section (PMSS), Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, will examine how the UN has developed a compliance framework to address such risks and how this might serve as a model for future regional, coalition, or bilateral peace enforcement and counterterrorism operations.
Lunch will be served.
