Colonel Tarunendra Pratap Singh.
New Delhi: India has told the United Nations that those who attack peacekeepers must face accountability, and has made the safety of Blue Helmets a central plank of its campaign for a Security Council seat. The message was delivered by Colonel Tarunendra Pratap Singh, the military adviser at India’s Permanent Mission to the UN in New York.
Col Tarunnendra Pratap Singh was speaking on Thursday at the annual debate on the comprehensive review of the whole question of peacekeeping operations, held at the General Assembly’s Fourth Committee. He said peacekeepers today face “asymmetric and technologically enabled” threats, and that the perpetrators of attacks on them must be held to account. India, he added, regards the safety and security of peacekeepers as one of the most important aspects of peacekeeping.
Resolution 2589 and India’s record
Singh pointed to India’s continued leadership on Security Council Resolution 2589, adopted in August 2021 during its presidency of the 15-member Council. The resolution calls on states hosting peacekeeping missions to promote accountability for the killing of, and all acts of violence against, UN personnel. It describes targeted attacks on peacekeepers as a major challenge to UN operations.
He paid homage to the 184 Indian peacekeepers who have died in UN service, more than any other country has lost. India has deployed over 300,000 (three lakh) troops across 50 missions to date, according to Singh, and is among the largest troop contributors in the history of UN peacekeeping. He said India's commitment rests on seven decades of operational engagement.
Security Council candidature
Singh said India regards peacekeeping as irreplaceable to the UN’s core purpose, and has made it a priority in its candidature for a non-permanent Security Council seat for the 2028-29 term. He said India wants a peacekeeping architecture that is “better resourced, better protected, and more representative of the world it serves”.
He argued that troop- and police-contributing countries should have a structured voice in shaping the mandates the Council sets. He also called for faster integration of technology and renewable energy in missions, and cited India’s support for the UNITE AWARE initiative. He said the UN Special Committee on Peacekeeping Operations, known as C-34, remains the appropriate forum for discussions on peacekeeping matters.
India has deployed women peacekeepers since 1960 and currently has 160 serving, Singh said. Since 2019 it has also sent female engagement teams with its contingents to various missions.
A year of attacks
The remarks follow repeated attacks on UN personnel in 2026. India’s mission to the UN condemned attacks on the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) in late March, after hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah escalated along the Blue Line, the UN-demarcated boundary between Israel and Lebanon. The external affairs ministry said in early April that the inviolability of UN missions and the safety of peacekeepers must be ensured. India has about 600 troops in UNIFIL.
In April, India condemned an attack on French peacekeepers in southern Lebanon and urged the Lebanese government to investigate it urgently. On June 4, it condemned an attack that killed a Serbian peacekeeper and injured two others. By early June, the UN secretary-general’s spokesperson, Stéphane Dujarric, had said seven UNIFIL peacekeepers had been killed since the escalation in March. In August, India condemned an attack in South Sudan that killed an Ethiopian peacekeeper.
The UN secretary-general, António Guterres, has said attacks on peacekeepers are grave violations of international humanitarian law and of Security Council resolutions, and may amount to war crimes.
Col Tarunendra Pratap Singh’s earlier interventions
Singh has spoken at the UN on the issue before. In February, at the first C-34 meeting of the year, he called attacks on the UN mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUSCO), which killed three peacekeepers, “unacceptable” and said the safety and security of peacekeepers must be paramount.
At the same meeting he rejected remarks by a Pakistani delegate on the UN Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP) as “unwarranted”. He said Jammu and Kashmir has been, and will remain, an integral part of India. UNMOGIP was deployed in January 1949 to supervise the ceasefire between India and Pakistan in Jammu and Kashmir.
Colonel Tarunendra Pratap Singh is an officer of the Indian Army’s Parachute Regiment, one of the Army’s elite airborne infantry formations, which also includes its Special Forces battalions.
He was awarded the Vishisht Seva Medal (VSM) in 2022, as part of the Republic Day honours announced by the Ministry of Defence. He hails from Bihar.
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