5 November 2025

The event

Key issues discussed

UN peace operations face persistent challenges in addressing borderland and cross-border dynamics. Conflict drivers, armed group mobility, and political economies are concentrated in border regions, yet missions remain state- and capital-centric, often lacking presence or leverage at the periphery. Mandates and funding frameworks are territorially bounded, limiting responses to transnational networks of resource extraction, trafficking and recruitment. Consent and local ownership or partnership may also be an issue, as political elites may benefit from borderland informality, reducing incentives to extend governance. Ongoing funding cuts – not just in the peace operations field but in the humanitarian sector – may exacerbate these issues, with even less capacity available to address issues in the periphery. While some participants cited the promise of local and regional cooperative models (as opposed to UN or other externally-led peace interventions), others noted that these were equally prey to issues of political will, and that often the “cross-border” or regional components of these arrangements proved empty.

What is being done/to do about them

Few examples of UN missions effectively addressing cross-border issues were identified, however, several innovative regional and ad-hoc approaches were discussed.

In regions with multiple UN Peacekeeping Operations (PKO), participants noted that coordination was limited to monthly meetings of force commanders to deconflict operations, rather than to coordinate responses to cross-border threats. A positive counterexample was missions’ cross-border efforts to mitigate conflict which could arise from transhumance movements.

Participants identified the Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF) Lake Chad Basin, the G5 Sahel, and other regional initiatives as innovative models, integrating political, security, and development approaches. Participants raised the question of how the UN can better support such initiatives.

What implications emerged for the UNSC and UN HQ

For the UN HQ, implications include the need for transnational analytical frameworks and stronger alignment between peacekeeping, political, and development arms to address cross-border conflict dynamics. The discussion highlighted that UN and Member State policy shops are primarily organized around country desks, making efforts to identify and address transnational conflict dynamics more bureaucratically complex and therefore less common.

For the UNSC, connecting mandates within a given region could help facilitate greater inter-mission coordination. Additionally, greater support for regional organization or ad-hoc responses could help maximize their impact.