Defence Primer

India’s Participation in Un
Peacekeeping Missions: More
Status Quo Than Game Changer
Ritika Passi
Ritika Passi is a Research Fellow and Project Editor at ORF. She focuses on issues of security and
development, and is in charge of producing special projects.
Setting the Stage
From keeping and enforcing peace to engineering, medical and humanitarian assistance, as military observers
and peacebuilders, India’s record in the United Nations-sanctioned collective security mechanism of
peacekeeping is well known. It has contributed the most troops—numbering over 180,000—to this practice
since its inception, and is currently the third-largest troop contributing country (TCC) after Bangladesh and
Ethiopia, 1 as well as a critical contributor of air and other advanced military assets. As needs and contexts in
which blue helmets operate have evolved, India has also fielded the first all-female contingent in the history of
UN peacekeeping, which has recently ended its mission in Liberia, and has doubled its contribution of police
units to missions.
India’s participation has won it much deserved praise—locals gave the Indian contingent the moniker ‘Friends
of Somalia’ (in stark contrast to how other TCCs were perceived); former UN Secretary-General Butros
Butros-Ghali once commended the Indian troops for their “superior training and high sense of responsibility”
in Mozambique in a BBC interview; and more recently, Indian peacekeepers in South Sudan (forming onethird
of the UN contingent there) were praised for having prevented a carnage. Individuals, too, have been
recognised. For instance Lt. General Prem Chand, who served as Force Commander in missions in Democratic
Republic of Congo, Cyprus, Namibia and Zimbabwe, was awarded the UN Peace Medal.
Yet, this “declared” recognition—verbal or written applause—of India’s experience, merit and dedication to
UN peacekeeping is not commensurate with actual acknowledgment in terms of representation at high-level
posts and inclusion in decision making and mission planning. To date, India has provided two military, two
deputy military and two police advisors, as well as 15 force commanders (the latest deputation of Major
General Jai Shankar Menon as head of the UNDOF occurring in February of this year) in its almost 70 years
of service to the collective security mechanism.
Large TCCs, such as India, are also, still, not adequately consulted before mission mandates are formally
announced. These latter are typically too broad and all encompassing, or too robust, and without commensurate
resources, consequently posing practical difficulties for the troops and policemen on the ground as well as
concerns regarding safety and security. (India has thus far lost 163 individuals in these missions.) Since they
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