United Nations Mission in the Republic of South Sudan (UNMISS)

South Sudan became the world's newest country on 9 July 2011, and the day before its independence the Security Council had already put a peacekeeping mission in place to help it stand up. UNMISS was meant to support a young state through its first years. Instead it became one of the most cited examples in this syllabus of a mission whose mandate outran its capacity, when renewed fighting turned the very civilians it was protecting into casualties inside its own compounds.

In two minutes

UNMISS was established on 8 July 2011, one day before South Sudan's independence, to help the new state build peace and protect civilians, but it is studied in this module chiefly as a case study in the gap between a peacekeeping mandate and a mission's actual capacity to deliver it.

The rest of this chapter

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