Book Chapter: India and International Norms: R2P, Genocide Prevention, Human Rights, and Democracy
Richard Gowan and Sushant K. Singh. Sushant is a fellow for national security at the Takshashila Institution.
in
Shaping the Emerging World: India and the Multilateral Order
W.P.S. Sidhu, Pratap Bhanu Mehta and Bruce Jones
Brookings Institution Press, 358 pages. (2013)
Introduction
India’s involvement in United Nations (UN) peacekeeping operations is one of its most visible contributions to the multilateral system. More than 100,000 Indian military and police personnel have served in forty of the UN’s sixty- five peacekeeping missions, dating back to their inception in the 1950s. As of April 2013, India had 6,851 troops and 1,038 police officers under UN com- mand, representing just less than 10 percent of all uniformed personnel in blue-helmet operations. These overall figures arguably underrepresent the importance of India in peacekeeping, as it offers the UN a range of specialized military assets—such as combat helicopters and field hospitals—that peacekeeping missions urgently need. Yet despite these contributions, there is a curious ambivalence around India’s participation in UN peace operations.