INTRODUCTION

On Wednesday, April 11, 2018, the Stimson Center, along with the Alliance for Peacebuilding and United Nations Association of the National Capital Area, co-hosted a “preview conversation” with leading policy-makers, practitioners, and scholars in advance of the April 24-25, 2018 U.N. General Assembly High-Level Meeting on Peacebuilding and Sustaining Peace.

Sofía Sebastián and Aditi Gorur

A fundamental principle of United Nations (U.N.) peacekeeping is that missions deploy only with the consent of the main parties to a conflict, including the host-state government. In practice, however, the absence of genuine host-state consent represents one of the greatest threats to the success of modern peacekeeping missions.

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres’ much anticipated Report on Peacebuilding and Sustaining Peace was recently released, in the lead-up to the U.N. General Assembly High-Level Meeting on Peacebuilding and Sustaining Peace to be held April 24-25 2018 in New York, in accordance with the U.N.

The Central African Republic (CAR) is currently experiencing an increase in violence against civilians and a slide toward instability, while attempts to find a solution through a political process have stalled. Despite efforts to strengthen state authority outside Bangui, the state is not present in most of the country, and Central Africans do not trust their government to represent them or the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in CAR (MINUSCA) to protect them.