Tags: Peace, Global economy, Politics, Power shifts, Norms and values, Organized crime, Resources, Migrations, New technologies, New media, Private security companies, Demographics, Climate change

In this publication, ZIF presents the results of a process that brought together a diverse and interdisciplinary group of experts in three workshops on three continents over a period of 18 months. The publication is structured in four parts. The first part provides an overview of the factors seen as critical by the participants for the future of peace operations and of the ways these factors may develop in the next thirteen years. It also outlines the main features of four possible scenarios distilled from combinations of such “key factor projections.” The second part contains the full scenarios: Erratic Progress, National Interests, Regional Diversity, and Global Cooperation. Each one portrays a different state of peace operations in 2025, and describes the path that has led to this state as well as events that have shaped it. The third part of the publication offers some more thoughts on how the scenarios might promote strategic thinking on peace operations. We have added a few questions that can help jumpstart a debate. Finally, the scenario process and the underlying methodology are described in more detail in the section “From Shaping Factors to Scenarios.”