What does it take to get food, medicine, emergency education, and shelter to record numbers of people in some of the most dangerous places on Earth?

The UN does this around the world, including in Afghanistan, Haiti, Sudan, Ukraine, and the occupied Palestinian territory.

In April 2022, Afghanistan’s de-facto authorities banned all cultivation of opium poppy under strict new laws. Opium is the essential ingredient for manufacturing the street drug heroin, and the class of medical prescription opioids which millions rely on for pain medication worldwide.

While the 2022 harvest was largely exempted from the decree, the Taliban have strictly enforced the ban this year, aggressively eradicating poppy plantations and leaving farmers with limited economic opportunities.

If you look at the hard data, UN peacekeeping missions succeed most of the time. They significantly reduce civilian casualties, shorten conflicts, and help make peace agreements stick.

In two thirds of completed missions since the Cold War, UN peacekeepers, who are recruited from many different countries around the world, have succeeded in fulfilling their mandate.