When a peacekeeping mission transitions out of a country, it’s often the culmination of years of planning and negotiation. Indeed, modern peacekeeping doctrine requires that a peace operation include withdrawal conditions in its initial deployment plan. But at a time of financial crisis and free-falling budgets across the UN, several missions are now being forced to draw down without a transition plan in place – leaving countries without the critical protections and support they’ll need as UN peacekeepers depart.
On a recent visit we saw this scenario playing out in South Sudan. As the country faces a recurrence of civil war and struggles to respond to the continuing spillover effects of conflict in Sudan, the mission there is being forced to pull back nearly half of its field presence. It’s a worrying situation that raises critical questions about whether Member States have fully considered the consequences of financial tug-of-wars in New York – and whether 2026 is likely to see a much larger global shortfall in key protection priorities.
“Contingency” planning and force reductions in South Sudan
Years of countries failing to pay their assessed contributions came to a head last year, generating a major liquidity crisis for the UN. In October 2025, due to a funding shortfall of about (against a $5.6 billion peacekeeping budget), the Secretary-General requested peacekeeping operations to prepare contingency plans that included a in expenditures. Shortly thereafter, the main UN Secretariat office in charge of peacekeeping announced plans to cut 25 per cent of peacekeeping troops and police – equivalent to across 9 missions.
While this contingency planning (as it is known internally) is usually discussed as a financial challenge, these reductions are having effects that go beyond budgets – producing drawdown-like conditions, but without the planning, communication or handover that would normally accompany a transition.
One of the most affected missions has been the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS). Since early February, UNMISS has closed or downsized temporary operating bases and field offices, reducing its operational footprint from 28 to 18 sites – effectively shrinking the mission by a third. In the 18 remaining sites, there have been deep cuts in force numbers, and a handover of some key responsibilities as a result. We visited the northern city of Malakal in Upper Nile State, a state that has become one of the key host sites for hundreds of , as well as those displaced by recent internal conflict in South Sudan. Just a week before our visit, in large part due to these contingency planning reductions, UNMISS handed over the Protection of Civilians (PoC) camp in Malakal that had been a safe haven for of displaced people .
Crucially, these reductions are taking place at a moment when the context points in the opposite direction: South Sudan is at the brink of relapsing into civil war, and the war in neighbouring Sudan has caused the world’s largest humanitarian crisis and displaced record numbers of people.
Crucially, these reductions are taking place at a moment when the context points in the opposite direction: South Sudan is at the brink of relapsing into civil war, and the war in neighbouring Sudan has caused the world’s largest humanitarian crisis and displaced record numbers of people.
Examining the effects that contingency planning is having already in UNMISS highlights two concerns for peacekeeping and system priorities going forward. First, if the effects are similar in other missions to what they are in UNMISS, we should be worried that these contingency cuts have already drawn down mission structures and resources to a point where they’re unable to fulfil their basic mandates. A second concerning trend is that contingency cuts have forced transitions – but without the level of political process and accountability needed to prevent a relapse into conflict.
How finance cuts are reshaping mission mandates
The core of UNMISS’ mandate, as with many large peacekeeping missions, is PoC. During prior outbreaks of civil conflict, UNMISS force presence, regular patrols and direct in camps and other sites (including the one in Malakal noted above) prevented an estimated tens of thousands of civilian deaths. At the height of the internal conflict several years ago, PoC functions also helped de-escalate tensions, and thereby contributed to a negotiated truce (in keeping with another of UNMISS’ core task – supporting the peace process). This linkage between PoC and prospects for PoC is in fact part of the reason why protecting civilians is such an important element within peacekeeping missions; research has shown that missions with strong protection mandates both reduce violence against civilians and in ways that can support political stabilization.
In the last year – particularly since the , one of the leaders of the two main parties within the country’s power-sharing framework – South Sudan has increasingly seemed on a path toward renewed civil conflict. Clashes and local conflict between these parties and their local affiliates have intensified , potential warning signs of a collapse of the peace agreement and bigger conflict yet to come – at a time when UNMISS’ capacity to create the neutralizing protective presence that had previously saved lives and braked the conflict has been drawn down to a bare minimum.
Those we spoke with pointed out that because all of these forces and field offices operate more as a network of coverage, and also because the cuts affect operational positions in different ways, a 25 per cent reduction can have a much bigger effect in terms of the mission’s overall reach and ability to carry out its mandate. Many of the field sites that have been closed down – which include Torit, Aweil, Yei, Akobo, Koch, Bunj and Pariang – previously served as launching points for regular patrols and rapid response to local incidents. With fewer such positions, patrols are launched from more centralized bases, reducing both their frequency and reach, and making it harder to maintain a sustained presence across dispersed and often hard-to-reach areas.
Contingency cuts have also resulted in cuts to logistics – helicopters, vehicles and other operational support equipment – that shrink the effective operating space even further, given that the poor road conditions (especially in the upcoming rainy season) make such equipment essential for reaching many flashpoint areas. In practice, this means fewer patrols, longer response times, reduced visibility in more remote areas and a narrowed area of influence.
As a result, the gap between the mandate and what the mission can realistically deliver is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. Several of the uniformed personnel we spoke with explained that there is a minimal threshold of personnel and resources needed to sustain sufficient mission presence and safety in the field. With these declines in personnel and resources, the mission is dangerously close to only operating with that minimum threshold. As such, it risks becoming a force that can only protect its own personnel, rather than one that can proactively or sustainably fulfill its mandate to protect civilians. One international observer speculated that downgrading the mission from a mandate may even be in order, in recognition of what can realistically be implemented on the ground; but that sort of change may not reflect the gap between what the mission is being asked to execute (through its extensive mandate) and what it is resourced to deliver.
The drift towards unstructured mission transitions
The consequences of this mandate-resource gap are not only felt by the populations that missions are set up to protect but also affect the credibility of the UN and of the international system itself. This is the very reason that questions about when and how a peacekeeping mission withdraws or "transitions" usually require extensive deliberations both within and outside the country in question. Deliberations over whether missions should be pulled back within the Security Council, as well as with the host country, create overall political responsibility for the decision to make a transition. Transition discussions also usually involve extensive consultations and planning on the ground, in each of the locations where the mission has a footprint, so that as the mission withdraws, tasks are responsibly handed over to the Government, to other peacebuilding partners or civil society.
In South Sudan, financial constraints are driving a contraction of presence that resembles a gradual withdrawal, but without the corresponding political decision or transition process required. Unlike formally planned mission transitions, which are embedded in a broader political process and accompanied by structured handovers of responsibilities to state authorities, these changes are taking place under a compressed timeline and with limited preparation possible. With the example of the PoC site in Malakal, UNMISS took significant efforts to have a smooth handover and transition of responsibilities to the South Sudanese Government (which will now manage the site as an ). But nonetheless, the speed of transition forced by contingency planning meant that basic questions – would the same UN humanitarian agencies continue to support the camp population, and at the same levels? How would exterior protection barriers be managed and by whom? Would those in these camps be given options to be relocated to other areas? – remained unanswered, creating potential gaps in coverage and future protection risks. In other sites where UNMISS presence was eliminated or drawn down, the hasty timeline allowed for no meaningful handover conversations at all.
One international observer who had previously been posted to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) drew a contrast between the planned and staged drawdown of MONUSCO (which is still ongoing) and the de facto transition process going on in South Sudan. While she observed that the process in DRC could often be fraught, there was nonetheless a robust level of conversation, planning and coordination on where and how MONUSCO would draw down, involving the DRC Government, other international representatives and missions, Troop Contributing Nations (to the mission), as well as other civil society and non-governmental actors who might de facto be facilitating such transitions at a ground level.
The current changes in UNMISS, by comparison, reflect a contraction driven primarily by financial constraints rather than strategic choice, and with no time for either national or local level consultations that could ensure a smooth transition both on the political and operational fronts.
The current changes in UNMISS, by comparison, reflect a contraction driven primarily by financial constraints rather than strategic choice, and with no time for either national or local level consultations that could ensure a smooth transition both on the political and operational fronts. This creates a fundamental problem of accountability. In effect, strategic choices about where and how the UN can operate are being made indirectly, through budgetary constraints rather than through political deliberation. As a result, decisions taken (or not taken) in financial terms are shaping the realities of peacekeeping missions on the ground, without a corresponding framework for political accountability.
Implications for policy and practice
Efforts to better document the operational consequences of resource cuts are already underway within the UN to examine, for example, how fewer troops translate into fewer patrols, longer response times and widening gaps in geographic coverage. These efforts should be reported consistently to the Security Council, as well as to the , which has recently been asked to ratify these contingency cuts as part of its budgetary role. A consistent trend in recent years has been that Member States authorize protection mandates, but do not consistently provide the means to implement them. Contingency cuts have heightened that mandate-to-resources gap to a breaking point, and the political decision-making bodies need to be aware of this in upcoming deliberations.
Drawing that link between payment defaults and consequences on the ground should also inform the broader system of Member State financing. Some of this gets to the larger question of whether the system is embedded with the right incentives to ensure timely and full payment – via enforcement of Article 19 and other practice that has emerged. But in addition to such global reforms to processes, there is also an urgent need for these on-the-ground consequences to be injected more directly into the main Member State vehicles that are currently responsible for raising peacekeeping troops, equipment and support. Voluntary pledging forums such as the Peacekeeping Ministerial are designed to address capability gaps. But in recent years, have noted that these forums have struggled to make that connection, and to translate pledged capabilities into deployable forces that can support effective operations on the ground.
At the same time, peacekeeping policymakers and mission planners should continue to explore how to address the more effectively, as well as how critical tasks – most importantly PoC tasks – can be sustained with less presence on the ground. This includes ongoing discussions about how on-the-ground presence through patrols can be complemented by other capabilities, for example aerial surveillance (while recognizing that such approaches depend on host-State consent and many host-States do not give permission for UAV surveillance), or making greater use of complementary approaches such as unarmed civilian protection.
The number of active armed conflicts worldwide has reached a “”, and yet the means to respond, mitigate immediate civilian suffering, create offramps toward conflict de-escalation and initiate potential conflict resolution processes, is weaker than it has been in many years, possibly decades. The example of what is happening with the mission in UNMISS illustrates that this diminished capacity to respond has not happened as a result of a strategic decision or choice; the international community has instead backed into this situation through failure to get a hold of budgetary processes and to align them with political commitments and expectations.
At this period of system shifts and funding shortfalls, there is indeed a need to economize. Some contraction in presence will be inevitable. But international partners and the UN must be clear-eyed about on-the-ground consequences and consider that in many areas slashed budgets are hollowing out capacities to such an extent that core mandated tasks can no longer be delivered – risking the lives of those missions were set up to protect.
This work is supported by the Cross-Border Conflict Evidence, Policy and Trends (XCEPT) research programme, funded by UK International Development. The views and opinions expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the UK government.