About DPO
The Department of Peace Operations (DPO) is dedicated to assisting the Member States and the Secretary-General in their efforts to maintain international peace and security.Activities by DPO
E-Analytics and Innovation Training
Arab States Qatar
In line with the UN Secretary-General’s Strategy on New Technologies and Data Strategy, and the recent UN 2.0 policy brief, DPPA’s annual E-Analytics and Innovation Course focuses on leveraging exploring innovative approaches in peace and security contexts. It provides an overview of the opportunities and challenges presented by emerging new technologies and equips participants with practical skills and tools to integrate evidence-driven analysis into UN initiatives for conflict prevention, peacemaking, and peacebuilding.
Designing the course to align with DPPA’s mandate and the UN 2.0 vision was instrumental in making project outputs more relevant, actionable, and grounded in institutional priorities. This strategic alignment encouraged participants to approach their prototypes with a focus on cost-efficiency and practicality—an especially important consideration given the current financial constraints.
Geoguard
Africa, Arab States CameroonA dashboard that transforms raw open-source satellite data into user-friendly insights to enhance data-driven understanding of climate, peace and security. The platform covers 29 countries across the Middle East, West, and Central Africa.
Activity Type AI Tools/SolutionsResearch/Reports/AssessmentsAI -powered large-scale synchronous dialogues
Arab States, Latin America and the Caribbean Guatemala
Complementing other engagements and analytical methods to meaningfully enhance inclusivity and engage voices in peace processes, the Innovation Cell employs Artificial Intelligence (AI) for mediators and actors to hold real-time, synchronous, moderated consultations in languages of choice, including local dialects, with up to 1,000 people in a single session simultaneously, circumventing physical and linguistic barriers.
Digital dialogues have proven to be a valuable complement to traditional methods, expanding reach and enabling more flexible, real-time participation. Their success hinges on thoughtful process design—particularly in how questions are framed to elicit meaningful, contextually relevant responses. A key insight from this experience is the critical role of national staff in reviewing translations into local dialects. Their involvement ensures that linguistic nuances, cultural sensitivities, and contextual accuracy are preserved, thereby enhancing both the credibility and the inclusivity of the engagement process.
Monitoring and Analysis of Information Environment (MAIE) tool
Global Central African RepublicDemocratic Republic of the CongoLebanonSouth Sudan
The Secretary-General’s 2025 Global Risk Report identifies mis/disinformation as the leading global threat for which society is least prepared. In peacekeeping settings, MDH deepens polarization, erodes trust, incites violence, and undermines political and peace processes. It weakens local support for UN missions and endangers personnel. In 2022, civilians and peacekeepers lost their lives during MDH-fuelled unrest in the DRC, a peacekeeper was killed in Lebanon during an attack linked to misinformation, and influence operations contributed to the withdrawal of the mission in Mali. The targeting of women public figures, journalists, human rights defenders and UN staff has become widespread.
Technological tools are essential to monitor and analyse the vast and complex media environment. They enable situational awareness, early warning, and help to identify narratives of concern that undermine information integrity. Commercially available tools, while powerful, have limited capacity to identify patterns of online inauthentic behaviour and understand offline (FM radio) content. To address these needs, in the context of the Digital Transformation Strategy for UN peacekeeping, DPO and OICT are developing two tools – one of which is the Monitoring and Analysis of the Information Environment (MAIE) platform for advanced analytics of the digital information environment.
The MAIE platform is a UN peacekeeping analytics tool that helps peacekeeping missions monitor and analyze harmful narratives across digital and radio spaces. It ingests social media and radio broadcast data to map account networks, flag coordinated or inauthentic behavior, and assess bot-like activity, giving analysts an integrated view of emerging risks. Analysts can log narratives of concern and generate evidence-based reports that support early warning, operational decision-making, and mission responses. The platform has been codeveloped with peacekeeping missions through an iterative, user-centered process. MAIE has already informed operations in contexts such as Mali and the DRC and supported engagement with social media platforms to act on malicious accounts. Integrating MAIE with other tools part of the peacekeeping ecosystem – including Unite Aware (a system for enhancing peacekeeping mission situational awareness), and CPAS (the platform used to monitor performance indicators and mandate implementation within missions) – is planned in coming iterations of the platform.