interview —The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (FINUL) plays a key role in the promotion of security and stability in the south of the country, by actively cooperating with the Lebanese Armed Forces to strengthen its presence and capacity. In the current setting, throughout all the region, the situation is unstable. FINUL, with its more than 11.000 troops, is carrying out a huge work, including personnel from Spain, of extremely value. They are still performing an important preventive role in a huge sensitive area by facilitating interaction between Lebanon and Israeli Armed Forces ones, preventing the escalation of incidents and working to strengthen the institutions. —The United Nations reform is still a pending issue. How would that affect to the Peacekeeping Department? —The current challenges and deficiencies of the organization require adjustments in our working method, as well as improvements in our effectiveness, including a reduction of the fragmentation and assurance of an integrated approach in our work. Dealing with political and security issues with a holistic and integral approach is currently producing dividends: we have achieved an improvement of our working methods, making them more strategic and more integrated. —What is the Action for Peacekeeping (A4P) initiative about, which has been presented by António Guterres? —The General Secretary is personally committed to perform the United Nations reform through this initiative. The A4P main goal is to address the concerns and challenges over peacekeeping, including, among others, slowly or changing political processes, dangerous contexts or major threats. To do that, we should jointly work and keep progressing in achievements that are actually a reality, as durable political solutions and a lasting peace, a better performance and security of our troops, more mobility, as well as an increased participation of women in peacekeeping through the Women, Peace and Security Agenda. However, we need to do more. We need a change in the collective mentality, and regarding this, there is still a lot to do. The continued support provided by our partners, particularly Spain, in providing highly qualified troops and financial support, is essential to continue with our work. By means of the A4P initiative, the General Secretary also issued a call to Member States, the Security Council, host countries, countries providing contingents and police forces, regional partners and financial contributors in renewing our collective commitment and encouraging them to be mutually committed to establish a peace operations design that is adapted to future conditions. Peacekeeping is, above all, a collective alliance, and it is imperative that all of us work together to achieve our objectives. As I said before and I repeat now, we are now having some progresses in certain areas, but there is still a lot to do, and the persons we are serving for deserve our total commitment. —How can the UN contributions cuts announced by some countries affect this? —The UN peacekeeping not only provides solutions, but also dividends. We managed to implement certain measures to produce savings and efficiencies and to maximize our effectiveness within the existent limitation of resources. It is important that our allies, including Member States and other partners, are aware that peace operations need the adequate resources to fulfil the difficult and dangerous assigned tasks. Today, the Peacekeeping Department is composed of more than 98,000 troops deployed around the world and counts with an annual budget of 6,5 billion dollars, amount lower to the 0.5 per 100 of the world military expense. To serve as a comparison and example, only the 2018 annual budget of the New York City Police Department was of 5,6 billion dollars. 38 Revista Española de Defensa December 2019
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