NEW YORK CITY: The head of UN peacekeeping used his final International Day of UN Peacekeepers address to issue an urgent call for the violence in Lebanon to end, as the organization mourned the death of yet another soldier killed while serving with the UN Interim Force in Lebanon.
Jean-Pierre Lacroix, the under-secretary-general for peace operations, said that Sgt. Nilovan Ivanovic of Serbia died from critical injuries sustained when mortar shells struck his position in Lebanon. He would have celebrated his 37th birthday the following day. He was the seventh UNIFIL peacekeeper killed since March 2026.
“All these attacks against peacekeepers are unacceptable,” Lacroix told journalists at the UN headquarters in New York.
“The violence must stop for the civilians who are living under constant threat, it has to stop for the more than 1 million people displaced from their homes, and for the peacekeepers who are there, holding that position in Lebanon, liaising with the parties, doing their best to maintain stability.”
Lacroix was unequivocal about the UN’s commitment to UNIFIL, despite the dangerous environment in which it operates, as the force prepares for the end of its mission. Asked whether the force would remain deployed in the field until its mandate expires on Dec. 31 this year, he said: “Absolutely, yes.
“There is full commitment by us and, more importantly, our peacekeepers, all of them on the ground, to stay and continue to deliver until the end of the mandate.”
Describing what delivery of that mandate involves in practice, he said UNIFIL personnel had been supporting the work of the Lebanese Armed Forces and, over recent weeks, have been focusing to a significant degree on facilitating humanitarian assistance to those civilians who remain in areas south of the Litani River.
Lacroix paid tribute in particular to UNIFIL commander Maj. Gen. Diodato Abagnara, and highlighted a recent humanitarian operation conducted in Tyre, the latest in a series of such missions.
“You can see that there’s strong dedication to support the civilians and to support Lebanon in general,” Lacroix said. “Whatever may come next, it’s about supporting the Lebanese people, it’s about supporting political progress. This is really what peacekeeping is about, and that applies also to Lebanon.”
Lacroix also touched on the future of the UN presence in southern Lebanon, after UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres provided the Security Council with a set of options for a possible successor mission to UNIFIL, framed around the continuing implementation of Resolution 1701.
Resolution 1701 was adopted by the Security Council in 2006 with the aim of resolving the conflict that year between Israel and Hezbollah. It calls for an end to hostilities, the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon, the withdrawal of Hezbollah and other forces from parts of the country south of the Litani River, and the disarmament of Hezbollah and other armed groups.
Lacroix said the secretary-general’s proposals had been developed after extensive consultations with Lebanese authorities, who communicated two main priorities. Firstly, that Lebanon’s own institutions, the Lebanese Army and security forces, were ready to take an active and empowered role in the implementation of Resolution 1701, including efforts to work toward ensuring full governmental control over all weapons on Lebanese soil.
Secondly, that Beirut sees continued value in a post-UNIFIL UN presence in the country focused on monitoring, observing, reporting, liaison and deconfliction.
“In the context, where there continues to be a presence of foreign forces in Lebanon, that aspect of liaison and deconfliction is also important,” Lacroix noted.
The proposals under consideration by the Security Council are for between 200 and 375 unarmed military observers, although the total number of uniformed personnel envisioned would be considerably larger, up to 5,500, to provide the observers with protection, medical support mobility and the ability to react quickly.
“Those military observers, unarmed, will need to be protected,” Lacroix said. “Given the severity of the environment, the secretary-general is determined that that support needs to be sufficient for us to be comfortable that if those observers are deployed in southern Lebanon, they will receive adequate support.”
He added that the proposed force would be scalable, in other words designed to adapt and potentially be reduced if the political and security situation on the ground improves.
“The secretary-general is not proposing something that is meant to be there for … many years,” he said.
UNIFIL was established in 1978, and by the time its mandate ends in December it will have been present in Lebanon for almost 48 years.
Lacroix also underlined that any future UN presence would be only one component of the assistance that Lebanon requires.
“Lebanon will need a lot of international support: greater support to the Lebanese Armed Forces and security forces, and also increased humanitarian assistance to the more than 1 million Lebanese civilians who are currently displaced,” he said.
In a broader appeal for political and financial investment in peacekeeping efforts, Lacroix provided official figures that illustrated how little the world spends in relative terms on one of its most visible instruments of conflict prevention. The entire annual budget for UN peacekeeping worldwide is $5.38 billion. That amount, he noted, is equivalent to just 16 hours of global military expenditure.
He also pointed out that the peacekeeping budget for a full year, covering all operations globally, is less than half the cost of organizing the upcoming FIFA World Cup.
“Nothing against soccer,” he said, “but I think that this comparison is worth reflecting on, really: what is it that the world is investing in peacekeeping, and what the output is relative to that amount.”
Lacroix took pains to note that the costs equation also includes the downstream bill for inaction.
“It’s a fact that the cost of supporting peacekeeping is far lower than the cost of responding when conflict spirals out of control,” he said.
“Let us invest in peace. We need the political and financial backing of member states. We need parties to conflict to uphold international humanitarian law and the UN Charter.”
Lacroix acknowledged that peacekeeping missions had already been forced to absorb cuts in funding because assessed contributions from member states had not been paid on time or in full.
“If you have to close bases where civilians are in need of protection, then those civilians will be less protected or non-protected,” he warned, noting that reduced capacity had resulted in fewer patrols and less engagement on civilian-protection efforts in several mission areas.
He appealed directly to UN member states to pay their assessed contributions in full and on time, calling this a matter of consistency.
“The mandates of peacekeeping operations are decided by member states, so we expect member states to be consistent,” he said.
New budget proposals from all peacekeeping missions are currently under discussion and must be adopted by June 30.
Friday’s briefing was Lacroix’s last in his role as head of the Department of Peace Operations.
“The most meaningful moments have always been those that I have had with the men and women who work in these very difficult, dangerous environments; meeting with them, and meeting with the men and women in the communities that are protected by the peacekeepers,” he said of his experiences.
He had never, in all his field visits, heard a civilian ask for peacekeepers to leave, he added.
“They’re always telling us: do more and please stay. I think it’s a tribute to what our peacekeepers are doing on the ground, day in, day out.”
