9/4/2025 DRC (International Christian Concern) — Speaking at the U.N. Peacekeeping Ministerial earlier this year, Secretary General António Guterres emphasized the key role played by the U.N.’s famously blue-helmeted peacekeepers stationed around the world.

“Blue helmets can mean the difference between life and death,” Guterres said. “They are also a clear demonstration of the power of multilateral action to maintain, achieve, and sustain peace.”

U.N. Peacekeeping, the body responsible for the U.N.’s peacekeeping missions around the world, currently operates in 11 theaters, from Haiti to the DRC to northern India. About half of its operations are in Africa, the new epicenter of Islamist terrorism and a growing hotbed of religiously motivated violence against Christians.

The scale of the security challenges facing the world is unprecedented, according to Guterres.

“We are now facing the highest number of conflicts since the founding of the United Nations,” he said, “and record numbers of people [are] fleeing across borders in search of safety and refuge.”

Despite the increased challenges, the U.N. peacekeeping budget was $2.7 billion in the red as of May 2025. While the U.N.’s peacekeeping presence will have to shrink in some areas due to these budgetary shortfalls, these drawdowns risk placing vulnerable persecuted communities at increased risk.

Several U.N. peacekeeping missions are active in theaters where religious persecution intersects with the rise of radical Islamist groups. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, U.N. Peacekeeping’s MONUSCO mission faces immense challenges as the Islamic State group-affiliated Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) continue brutal attacks on Christian communities.

In a particularly horrific incident in July, ADF militants raided a Catholic church at night in Komanda, killing about worshippers, including women and children. Earlier in the year, the group abducted 70 Christians during services in February, beheading many and leaving their bodies in a church in Kasanga. These atrocities reflect a deliberate targeting of religious gatherings, deeply undermining freedom of worship in eastern DRC.

Mali hosted the MINUSMA mission from 2013 to 2023. Since its departure, Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) has intensified its jihadist campaign in the region. On June 2, JNIM executed a coordinated attack on military checkpoints and Timbuktu airport, employing car bombs and armed assaults that resulted in dozens of soldier casualties.

Although MINUSMA primarily addressed security, its departure in 2023 underscored the importance of U.N. efforts in a context where Islamist militants enforce strict religious codes and suppress freedoms. JNIM’s broader trajectory — including expansion toward coastal West Africa and stricter governance in occupied zones — poses a deep threat to religious freedom and human rights more broadly.

The United States announced last week that it plans to cut about $800 million from funding designated for U.N. peacekeeping operations in 2024 and 2025 as it develops its budget for the next year. The U.S. is responsible for nearly 27% of U.N. Peacekeeping’s $5.6 billion annual budget, according to Bloomberg.

If implemented, these cuts will significantly impact the U.N.’s ability to promote peace and stability in places like the DRC.

Funding cuts and terrorist organizations are not the only challenges facing the U.N.’s peacekeeping forces. Host governments often come to disapprove of peacekeeping missions on their borders, as evidenced by Mali’s 2023 insistence that MINUSMA withdraw.

MONUSCO has also grown unpopular with Congolese leaders. In December 2023, the U.N. Security Council approved a phased withdrawal following a request from President Felix Tshisekedi for an expedited exit.

MONUSCO began its drawdown in February 2024. Prior to that, the mission had been operating in the DRC for more than 13 years, fielding nearly 18,000 personnel, including about 14,000 armed troops. Recent territorial gains by terrorist groups appear to be at least partly the result of the vacuum left by the mission’s drawdown, though peacekeepers remain active in that country to this day and continue to provide protection to civilians despite funding and political challenges.

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