United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations
The Department of Peacekeeping Operations is a department of the United Nations, charged with the planning, preparation and direction of UN peacekeeping operations. The DPKO traces its roots to 1948 with the creation of the UNMOGIP and UNTSO. Up to the late 1980s, peacekeeping missions were operated by six officials in the United Nations Office of Special Political Affairs, headed first by Under-Secretary-General Ralph Bunche, subsequently Brian Urquhart and Marrack Goulding. From the beginning, peacekeeping operations operated with a clear doctrine that applied to its traditional or classical peacekeeping operations for inter-state ceasefires: peacekeepers did not take sides or discharge firearms, save in self-defense, or meddle in politics; the official DPKO was created in 1992 when Boutros Boutros-Ghali took office as Secretary-General of the United Nations. Goulding became under-secretary-general for peacekeeping with Kofi Annan appointed as his deputy; the role of the DPKO, wasn't clarified until June 1992, when Boutrous-Ghali issued a plan to strengthen the UN's capacity for preventative diplomacy and peacekeeping, entitled An Agenda for Peace.
DPKO is split into the Office of Mission Support. Included within the Office of Mission Support are the logistics and administrative divisions, which provide logistics and financial support services to DPKO missions. OMS is responsible for determining financial reimbursement to UN member states for their contribution of Contingent owned equipment and services to peacekeeping missions. Letters of Assist are an important part of this. Part of DPKO are Mine Action, Best Practices, Military and Police Divisions. A March 2007 United Nations General Assembly Resolution titled “Strengthening the capacity of the Organization in Peacekeeping Operations” has called for the re-structuring of the department and the establishment of a separate Department of Field Support. Whereas the new entity serves as a key enabler by co-ordinating the administration and logistics in UN peacekeeping operations, DPKO concentrates on policy planning and providing strategic directions; this re-organisation was paralleled by a DPKO reform effort launched in 2005 entitled'Peace Operations 2010', which further pursues reforms initiated by the'Brahimi Report' Report of the Panel on United Nations Peacekeeping Operations.
This included an increase in personnel, the harmonization of the conditions of service of field and headquarters staff, the development of guidelines and standard operating procedures, improving the partnership arrangement between the Department of Peacekeeping Operations and the United Nations Development Programme, African Union and European Union. One area of this reform effort has been the development of clearer internal doctrine or guidance for UN peacekeeping; the highest level DPKO doctrine document was issued in 2008, known as the'capstone' doctrine. With the newest reform efforts, Secretary-General Guterres has made efforts to streamline peacekeeping efforts to conserve finances, eliminate excess and unnecessary roles; as an effort to be brought together and streamlined, shared regional divisions of the DPA and DPKO will restructure and remove duplication of tasks and duties allowing for more manpower available to explore new initiates and operations. This gives the department more resources and responsibilities for broader peace building efforts, which are of course by their nature linked to political analysis and strategy.
While peacekeeping operations are at an all-time high, funding continues to receive budget cuts, making effective business moves will allow peacekeeping operations to remain intact. By merging organizations, the shift in shared duties and management will allow for a wider spectrum of operations to be ready and available for troops on the ground. Less time duplicating work allows for more time to think of broader trends in security and employing preventative measures for future threats and streamlined transportation efforts; the bulk of peacekeeping operations funding is appropriated much like the general budget, but permanent members of the Security Council are required to pay a larger share, all states are free to contribute additional funding, equipment, or other services to missions of their respective choices. As of 2010, DPKO leads 16 different missions in Africa, the Caribbean, the Middle East, Americas and Asia. Serving in these missions are over 100,000 uniformed and civilian personnel.
Total approved annual expenses are over US$5 billion for the period July 2006 to June 2007. At an October 2006 press conference, the USG Jean-Marie Guéhenno announced that peacekeeping operations had reached an all-time high, will continue to expand as UNIFIL and UNMIT reach full strength, if a UN mission enters Darfur. List of United Nations peacekeeping missions United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations Official Website United Nations Rule of Law: The Department of Peacekeeping Operations, on the rule of law work conducted by the Department of Peacekeeping Operations. SPIA - Soldiers of Peace International Association
International Court of Justice
The International Court of Justice sometimes called the World Court, is the principal judicial organ of the United Nations. It settles legal disputes submitted by states and gives advisory opinions on legal issues referred by authorized U. N. organs and specialized agencies. Through its opinions and rulings, the ICJ serves as a source of international law; the ICJ is the successor of the Permanent Court of International Justice, established by the League of Nations in 1920 and began its first session in 1922. After the Second World War, both the League and the PCIJ were dissolved and replaced by the United Nations and ICJ, respectively; the Statute of the ICJ draws from that of its predecessor, the latter's cases remain valid opinio juris. All members of the U. N. are party to the ICJ Statute. The ICJ comprises a panel of 15 judges elected by the General Assembly and Security Council for nine-year terms, it is seated in the Peace Palace in The Hague, making it the only principal U. N. organ not located in New York City.
Its official working languages are French. Established in 1945 by the UN Charter, the court began work in 1946 as the successor to the Permanent Court of International Justice; the Statute of the International Court of Justice, similar to that of its predecessor, is the main constitutional document constituting and regulating the court. The court's workload covers a wide range of judicial activity. After the court ruled that the United States's covert war against Nicaragua was in violation of international law, the United States withdrew from compulsory jurisdiction in 1986 to accept the court's jurisdiction only on a discretionary basis. Chapter XIV of the United Nations Charter authorizes the UN Security Council to enforce Court rulings. However, such enforcement is subject to the veto power of the five permanent members of the Council, which the United States used in the Nicaragua case; the ICJ is composed of fifteen judges elected to nine-year terms by the UN General Assembly and the UN Security Council from a list of people nominated by the national groups in the Permanent Court of Arbitration.
The election process is set out in Articles 4–19 of the ICJ statute. Elections are staggered, with five judges elected every three years to ensure continuity within the court. Should a judge die in office, the practice has been to elect a judge in a special election to complete the term. No two judges may be nationals of the same country. According to Article 9, the membership of the court is supposed to represent the "main forms of civilization and of the principal legal systems of the world"; that has meant common law, civil law and socialist law. There is an informal understanding that the seats will be distributed by geographic regions so that there are five seats for Western countries, three for African states, two for Eastern European states, three for Asian states and two for Latin American and Caribbean states. For most of the court's history, the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council have always had a judge serving, thereby occupying three of the Western seats, one of the Asian seats and one of the Eastern European seats.
Exceptions have been China not having a judge on the court from 1967 to 1985, during which time it did not put forward a candidate, British judge Sir Christopher Greenwood being withdrawn as a candidate for election for a second nine-year term on the bench in 2017, leaving no judges from the United Kingdom on the court. Greenwood had been supported by the UN Security Council but failed to get a majority in the UN General Assembly. Indian judge Dalveer Bhandari instead took the seat. Article 6 of the Statute provides that all judges should be "elected regardless of their nationality among persons of high moral character" who are either qualified for the highest judicial office in their home states or known as lawyers with sufficient competence in international law. Judicial independence is dealt with in Articles 16–18. Judges of the ICJ are not able to act as counsel. In practice, members of the court have their own interpretation of these rules and allow them to be involved in outside arbitration and hold professional posts as long as there is no conflict of interest.
A judge can be dismissed only by a unanimous vote of the other members of the court. Despite these provisions, the independence of ICJ judges has been questioned. For example, during the Nicaragua case, the United States issued a communiqué suggesting that it could not present sensitive material to the court because of the presence of judges from Eastern bloc states. Judges may give their own separate opinions. Decisions and advisory opinions are by majority, and, in the event of an equal division, the President's vote becomes decisive, which occurred in the Legality of the Use by a State of Nuclear Weapons in Armed Conflict, ICJ Reports 66. Judges may deliver separate dissenting opinions. Article 31 of the statute sets out a procedure whereby ad hoc judges sit on contentious cases before the court; the system allows any party to a contentious case to select one additional person to sit as a judge on that case only. It is thus possible; the system may seem strange when compared with domestic court processes, but its purpose is to encourage states to submit cases.
For example, if a state knows that it will have a judicial officer
United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs
The UN Office for Disarmament Affairs is an Office of the United Nations Secretariat established in January 1998 as the Department for Disarmament Affairs, part of United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan's plan to reform the UN as presented in his report to the General Assembly in July 1997. Its goal is to promote nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation and the strengthening of the disarmament regimes in respect to other weapons of mass destruction and biological weapons, it promotes disarmament efforts in the area of conventional weapons landmines and small arms, which are the weapons of choice in contemporary conflicts. It is led by an Under-Secretary-General and High Representative, Izumi Nakamitsu of Japan, who took office on 1 May 2017. In its landmark resolution 1653 of 1961, “Declaration on the prohibition of the use of nuclear and thermo-nuclear weapons,” the UN General Assembly stated that the use of nuclear weaponry “would exceed the scope of war and cause indiscriminate suffering and destruction to mankind and civilization and, as such, is contrary to the rules of international law and to the laws of humanity”.
The United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs had been established as a department in 1982 upon the recommendation of the General Assembly's second special session on disarmament. In 1992, it became the Centre for Disarmament Affairs, working under the Department of Political Affairs. At the end of 1997, it reverted to being the Department for Disarmament Affairs. In 2007, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced the appointment of Sérgio de Queiroz Duarte of Brazil as the High Representative for Disarmament Affairs at the Under-Secretary-General level and the department became the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs. Following the retirement of Sérgio Duarte in February 2012, Angela Kane USG for Management, was appointed as the new High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, she was the first woman and first non diplomat appointed to this position. UNODA provides substantive and organizational support for norm-setting in the area of disarmament through the work of the UN General Assembly and its First Committee, the Disarmament Commission, the Conference on Disarmament and other bodies.
It fosters preventive disarmament measures, such as dialogue and confidence-building on military matters, encourages regional disarmament efforts. The latter includes the UN Register of regional forums, it provides information on the United Nations disarmament efforts. UNODA supports the development and implementation of practical disarmament measures after a conflict, such as disarming and demobilizing former combatants and helping them to reintegrate in civil society; the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs comprises five branches: Conference on Disarmament Secretariat and Conference Support Branch, Weapons of Mass Destruction Branch, Conventional Arms Branch, the Information and Outreach Branch and, Regional Disarmament Branch. RDB further manages three regional centers. Branches and centers are organized as follows: The Conference on Disarmament Secretariat and Conference Support Branch, based in Geneva, provides organizational and substantive servicing to the Conference on Disarmament, the single multilateral disarmament negotiating forum of the international community.
The WMD Branch provides substantive support in the area of the disarmament of weapons of mass destruction. It supports and participates in multilateral efforts to strengthen the non-proliferation of WMD and in this connection cooperates with the relevant intergovernmental organizations and specialized agencies of the United Nations system, in particular the IAEA, the OPCW and the CTBTO PrepCom; the CAB focuses its efforts in the conventional field of promoting transparency and confidence-building, curbing the flow of small arms in regions of tension, developing measures of practical disarmament. It is responsible for substantive conference support on the UN Programme of Action on small arms, the Arms Trade Treaty process, the UN transparency registers. CAB chairs the UN-internal coordination mechanism on small arms, CASA; the IO Branch organizes a wide variety of special events and programmes in the field of disarmament, produces ODA publications such as the Disarmament Yearbook and occasional papers, maintains the databases for specialized areas such as Register of Conventional Arms, Status of Treaties and Article 7 - Mine-Ban Convention.
The Regional Disarmament Branch provides substantive support, including advisory services, to Member States and subregional organizations on disarmament measures and related security matters. RDB oversees and coordinates the activities of the three regional centres: - UN Regional Centre for Peace and Disarmament in Africa - UN Regional Centre for Peace and Disarmament in Asia and the Pacific - UN Regional Centre for Peace and Development in Latin America and the Caribbean Izumi Nakamitsu, 2017–present Kim Won-soo, 2015–2017 Angela Kane, 2012–2015 Sérgio de Queiroz Duarte, 2007–2012 Nobuaki Tanaka, 2006–2007 Nobuyasu Abe, 2003–2006 Jayantha Dhanapala, 1998–2003 Conference on Disarmament Disarmament Insight International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons UN - Office for Disarmament Affairs UN Regional Centre for Peace and Disarmament in Africa UN Regional Centre for Peace and Disarmament in Asia and the Pacific UN Regional Centre for Peace and Development in Latin America and the Caribbean UN
Dag Hammarskjöld
Dag Hjalmar Agne Carl Hammarskjöld was a Swedish economist and diplomat who served as the second Secretary-General of the United Nations. Hammarskjöld was the youngest person to have held the post, at an age of 47 years upon his appointment, his second term was cut short when he died in the crash of his DC-6 airplane while en route to cease-fire negotiations during the Congo Crisis. He is one of only four people to be awarded a posthumous Nobel Prize. Hammarskjöld has been referred to as one of the two best secretaries-general of the United Nations, his appointment has been mentioned as the most notable success for the UN. United States President John F. Kennedy called Hammarskjöld "the greatest statesman of our century." Dag Hammarskjöld was born in Jönköping to the noble family Hammarskjöld. He spent most of his childhood in Uppsala, his home there, which he considered his childhood home, was Uppsala Castle. He was the fourth and youngest son of Hjalmar Hammarskjöld, Prime Minister of Sweden from 1914 to 1917, wife Agnes Maria Carolina Hammarskjöld.
Hammarskjöld's family was ennobled in 1610 due to deeds of the warrior Peder Mikaelsson Hammarskiöld, an officer in the cavalry who fought for both sides in the War against Sigismund, where he took the name Hammarskiöld at his ennobling. Hammarskjöld's ancestors had served the Monarchy of Sweden since the 17th century. Hammarskjöld studied first at Katedralskolan and at Uppsala University. By 1930, he had obtained Licentiate of Master of Laws degrees. Before he finished his law degree he had obtained a job as Assistant Secretary of the Unemployment Committee. From 1930 to 1934, Hammarskjöld was Secretary of a governmental committee on unemployment. During this time he wrote his economics thesis, "Konjunkturspridningen", received a doctorate from Stockholm University. In 1936, he became a secretary in Sweden's central bank the Riksbank. From 1941 to 1948, he served as chairman of the Riksbank's General Council. Hammarskjöld developed a successful career as a Swedish public servant, he was state secretary in the Ministry of Finance 1936–1945, Swedish delegate to the Organization for European Economic Cooperation 1947–1953, cabinet secretary for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs 1949–1951 and minister without portfolio in Tage Erlander's government 1951–1953.
He helped coordinate government plans to alleviate the economic problems of the post-World War II period and was a delegate to the Paris conference that established the Marshall Plan. In 1950, he became head of the Swedish delegation to UNISCAN, a forum to promote economic cooperation between the United Kingdom and the Scandinavian countries. Although Hammarskjöld served in a cabinet dominated by the Social Democrats, he never joined any political party. In 1951, Hammarskjöld was vice chairman of the Swedish delegation to the United Nations General Assembly in Paris, he became the chairman of the Swedish delegation to the General Assembly in New York in 1952. On 20 December 1954, he was elected to take his father's vacated seat in the Swedish Academy. On 10 November 1952 Trygve Lie announced his resignation as Secretary-General of the United Nations. Several months of negotiations ensued between the Western powers and the Soviet Union, without reaching an agreement on his successor. On 13 and 19 March 1953, the Security Council voted on four candidates.
Lester B. Pearson of Canada was the only candidate to receive the required majority, but he was vetoed by the Soviet Union. At a consultation of the permanent members on 30 March 1953, French ambassador Henri Hoppenot suggested four candidates, including Hammarskjöld, whom he had met at the Organisation for European Economic Cooperation; the superpowers hoped to seat a Secretary-General who would focus on administrative issues and refrain from participating in political discussion. Hammarskjöld's reputation at the time was, in the words of biographer Emery Kelèn, "that of a brilliant economist, an unobtrusive technician, an aristro-bureaucrat"; as a result, there was little to no controversy in his selection. Zorin declared; the announcement set off a flurry of diplomatic activity. British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden was in favor of Hammarskjöld and asked the United States to "take any appropriate action to induce the Chinese to abstain." At the U. S. State Department, the nomination "came as a complete surprise to everyone here and we started scrambling around to find out who Mr. Hammarskjold was and what his qualifications were."
The State Department authorized Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. the US Ambassador, to vote in favor after he told them that Hammarskjöld "may be as good as we can get." On 31 March 1953, the Security Council voted 10-0-1 to recommend Hammarskjöld to the General Assembly, with an abstention from Nationalist China. Shortly after midnight on 1 April 1953, Hammarskjöld was awakened by a telephone call from a journalist with the news, which he dismissed as an April Fool's Day joke, he believed the news after the third phone call. The Swedish mission in New York confirmed the nomination at 03:00 and a communique from the Security Council was soon thereafter delivered to him. After consulting with the Swedish cabinet and his father, Hammarskjöld decided to accept the nomination, he sent a wire to the Security Council: With strong fee
United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean
The United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, known as ECLAC, UNECLAC or in Spanish and Portuguese CEPAL, is a United Nations regional commission to encourage economic cooperation. ECLAC includes 46 member States, 13 associate members which are various non-independent territories, associated island countries and a commonwealth in the Caribbean. ECLAC publishes statistics covering the countries of the region and makes cooperative agreements with nonprofit institutions. ECLAC's headquarters is in Chile. ECLAC was established in 1948 as the UN Economic Commission for Latin America, or UNECLA. In 1984, a resolution was passed to include the countries of the Caribbean in the name, it reports to the UN Social Council. The following are all Member States of ECLAC: The following are all associate members of ECLAC: Santiago, Chile Mexico City, Mexico Port of Spain and Tobago Buenos Aires, Argentina Brasília, Brazil Montevideo, Uruguay Bogotá, Colombia Washington, DC, United States of America The formation of the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America was crucial to the beginning of "Big D development".
Many economic scholars attribute the founding of ECLA and its policy implementation in Latin America for the subsequent debates on structuralism and dependency theory. Although forming in the post-war period, the historic roots of the ECLA trace back to political movement made long before the war had begun. Before World War II, the perception of economic development in Latin America was formulated from colonial ideology; this perception, combined with the Monroe Doctrine that asserted the United States as the only foreign power that could intervene in Latin American affairs, led to substantial resentment in Latin America. In the eyes of those living in the continent, Latin America was economically strong; this concern of a need for economic restructuring was taken up by the League of Nations and manifested in a document drawn up by Stanley Bruce and presented to the League in 1939. This in turn influenced the creation of the United Nations Economic and Social Committee in 1944. Although it was a ineffective policy development the formation of the ECLA proved to have profound effects in Latin America in following decades.
For example, by 1955, Peru was receiving $28.5 million in loans per ECLA request. Most of these loans were utilized as means to finance foreign exchange costs, creating more jobs and heightening export trade. To investigate the extent to which this aid was supporting industrial development plans in Peru, ECLA was sent in to study its economic structure. In order to maintain stronghold over future developmental initiatives, ECLA and its branches continued providing financial support to Peru to assist in the country’s general development; the terms of trade at this time, set by the United States, introduced the concept of "unequal exchange" in that the so-called "North" mandated prices that allowed them a greater return on its own resources than that of the "South's". Thus, although the export sector had grown during this time, certain significant economic and social issues continued to threaten this period of so-called stability. Although real income was on the rise, its distribution was still uneven.
Social problems were still overwhelmingly prevalent. United Nations System eLAC eLAC2007, eLAC2010 and eLAC2015: Strategies for the Information Society in Latin America and the Caribbean Association of Caribbean States Community of Latin American and Caribbean States Paul Berthoud, A Professional Life Narrative, 2008, worked with CEPAL-ECLAC and offers testimony from the inside of the early years of the organization. José Briceño Ruiz, María Liliana Quintero Rizzuto and Dyanna de Benítez. "The ECLAC's structuralist thinking on development and Latin American integration: reflections on the contemporary relevance". Aportes para la Integración Latinoamericana. XIX: 1–324. ISSN 1667-8613. Retrieved 29 April 2014. UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean official site
Dag Hammarskjöld Library
The Dag Hammarskjöld Library is part of the United Nations headquarters and is connected to the Secretariat and conference buildings through ground level and underground corridors. It is named after the second Secretary-General of the United Nations; the Library has specialized in two major areas. Firstly, it is the main depository for United Nations documents and publications and maintains a selected collection of materials of the specialized agencies and United Nations affiliated bodies. Secondly, the Library collects books and other materials related to the organization's programs of activities; the Library was founded along with the United Nations in 1946. It was called the United Nations Library, the United Nations International Library, its creation was recommended by the 1945 report of the Preparatory Commission of the United Nations, which called for a "library with research and reference facilities" to be included in the Department Conference and General Services, now the Department of General Assembly Affairs and Conference Services.
Its responsibilities were further expanded upon in 1949 by the General Assembly, who decided that the primary function of the Library should be "to enable the delegations and other official groups of the Organization to obtain...the library materials and information needed in the execution of their duties." The 1949 document stipulated that the services of the Library would be made available to the specialized agencies of the United Nations, as well as select members of the public, such as, international governmental organizations, educational institutions and writers. However, by the mid- to late-50s, the original building of the Library was seen as inadequate compared to the size of the ever-growing collection of the Library. A 1959 report by Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld found that the building "provides no further opportunity for expansion and prohibits the growth of the Library to that level which would seem commensurate with the fulfilment of its purposes."In 1959, the Ford Foundation gave a grant of $6.2 million to the United Nations for the construction of a new Library building which would be "of the highest quality, aesthetically designed and equipped in conformity with the most modern library standards."
In recognition of their generous donation, the General Assembly instructed the Secretary-General to place a memorial stone at the entrance of the library inscribed with "Gift of the Ford Foundation."Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld was instrumental in securing the funding for the new building. A letter from the President of the Ford Foundation to the President of the General Assembly after Hammarskjold's death stated that it was the late Secretary-General's active interest and lobbying in the project to fund a new United Nations library, a decisive factor in the Foundation's donation; the new building was dedicated on 16 November 1961, just two months after Hammarskjöld's death, was renamed in his honor. The Library's primary functions are laid out in a 1949 Document from the Fifth Committee of the United Nations: The Library is responsible for all library services at Headquarters and for the acquisition of all library materials; the Library’s primary function is to enable the delegations and other officia1 groups of the Organization to obtain, with the greatest possible speed and economy, the library materials and information needed in the execution of their duties.
The services of the library will be made available, as far as feasible, to United Nations specialized agencies, accredited representatives of mass media, international governmental organizations, affiliated non-governmental organizations, educational institutions and writers. The Headquarters Library is responsible for indexing United Nations publications; the library is not open to the general public. However, it does provide access to much UN-related information by developing accessible online resources and services, via UN depository libraries worldwide; the library has created a number of research tools and services to ease the access to United Nations Documents: The Index to Proceedings is a series of print indexes useful for research on matters prior to 1979. It provides citation to the parliamentary documentation of the principal organs; each index has two parts: an index to speeches delivered. UNBISnet is the catalogue of the library. In addition to the library's holdings it accesses multilingual versions of UN documents.
In addition to the catalogue it includes two specialized databases: the Index to Speeches and the Voting Records databases. The UN Documentation Research Guide presents an overview of selected UN documents, publications and websites. Ask Dag is a database providing hundreds of answers about the United Nations, its documentation, as well as the services and resources offered by the library. UN Member States on the Record: Provides access to the key documents for each Member State related to its membership in the UN, statements made before the principal organs, draft resolutions sponsored, periodic reports submitted on Human Rights conventions. United Nations Digital Library: The Digital Library includes UN documents, voting data, speeches and open access publications; the platform provides access to UN-produced materials in digital format and bibliographic records for print UN documents starting in 1979. System features include linked data between related documentation such as resolutions, meeting records and voting, refining of searches by UN body, agency or type of document.
Homepage of the Dag Hammarskjold Library Dag Hammarskjöld Library Catalog
United Nations Department of Field Support
The Department of Field Support is a department of the United Nations dedicated to the support of peacekeeping field missions and political field missions. United Nations General Assembly report A/64/633 states the following about the DFS' role: "Protecting and nurturing a fragile peace is a critical role of the United Nations; this endeavour depends upon a coalition of will and action on the part of multiple actors: the Security Council, in terms of setting mandates. Within this framework, the Department of Field Support was created to be responsible for the mobilization all human and support services necessary to ensure that United Nations field missions are self-sufficient and can succeed under a wide range of post-conflict conditions." The Department of Field Support has been headed by Mr. Atul Khare since 2 March 2015, following the departure of Under-Secretary-General Ms. Ameerah Haq; the Department has four main divisions: Field Personnel Division Field Budget and Finance Division Logistics Support Division Information & Communications Technology DivisionIt runs bases in UN Global Service Center in Brindisi and Valencia, as well as Regional Service Center in Entebbe.
Founded in 2010, the UN Global Service Center's mandate is to "ensure efficient and effective peace operations through the core logistics, geospatial and telecommunications technology services it provides." Founded in 2010 as part of the Global Field Support Strategy in UNGA Resolution 64/269, the Regional Service Center in Entebbe's mandate is to "transform service delivery to field missions through a fundamental shift in the existing division of labor and a relocation of functions to improve responsiveness and address the needs of the field missions." Field Service Officers are civilians assigned to support UN peacekeeping and political missions in the field. DFS provides support in the areas of security, administration, human resources and technology; the origins of the Field Service go back to the beginning of the history of the UN's peacekeeping operations in 1948 when the Security Council authorized the deployment of UN military observers to the Middle East. The mission's role was to monitor the Armistice Agreement between Israel and its Arab neighbours – an operation which became known as the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization.
The office was created in 2007 to provide dedicated support to peacekeeping field missions and political field missions. United Nations Peacekeeping United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations List of United Nations Peacekeeping Missions UNGA Resolution 64/269 at undocs.org UNGA Report A/64/633 at undocs.org
