Swiss UN boss on peacekeeping challenges in the Middle East

The Swiss head of the United Nations’ oldest peacekeeping organisation explains the challenges of monitoring a ceasefire in the Middle East, where tensions have been particularly high in recent months. 

The UN Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO) is marking its 75th birthday. When Major General Patrick Gauchat was asked to lead it in 2021, it was the first time a Swiss officer had been given command of a UN peacekeeping mission. He is based at UNTSO headquarters in Jerusalem, where SWI swissinfo.ch went to visit him. 

UNTSO oversees the work of 153 military observers, among them 11 Swiss, and 250 civilians, in monitoring ceasefires, supervising armistice agreements, preventing isolated incidents from escalating, inspecting armed forces in the sector, carrying out investigations and assisting other UN peacekeeping operations in the Middle East. 

The organisation was set up after the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. A new ceasefire agreement between Israel and Syria was signed in 1974 after the Yom Kippur War. It delineated a demilitarised zone on the Golan and limited the number of forces each side can deploy within 25 kilometres of the zone. 

Switzerland has been participating in UNTSO since 1990 and has maintained a steady contribution of officers. Peace promotion at the international level is a priority task of the Swiss Armed Forces and is anchored in military law. 

Good offices

Part of Gauchat’s job is talking to army leaders and diplomats in the countries where UNTSO works, to discuss the military situation and work towards peace. In this context, he is also able to offer Swiss good offices. As a neutral country with a longstanding federalist tradition, Switzerland regularly offers its good offices to parties in conflict. 

Israel and Lebanon communicate through tripartite talks with the UN interim force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). Israel and Syria have no such platform, so Gauchat passes messages between the respective parties’ foreign ministers and the two generals in charge of maintaining the disengagement of forces agreement signed by both sides at the end of the last war. In this way, Gauchat is helping to ease tensions in an unstable region, as he told SWI swissinfo.ch at his headquarters in Jerusalem.