The three year tenure of French diplomat, Alain Le Roy, as head of the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations comes to an end on August 10th with no successor as yet announced.

Le Roy commanded more than 120,000 Blue Helmet (Casque bleu) troops around the world from the war in Congo (DRC), the violence in Darfur and Ivory Coast to the earthquake in Haiti.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon praised Le Roy for his “vision, courage and exceptional devotion” during times of crisis.  For his part, Le Roy was most proud of the work of the Blue Helmets in Congo saying the situation there has greatly improved in the last three years.

Despite reports of frequent incidents of rape and other forms of violence in the DRC, Le Roy said that the UN mission should be given credit for providing protection to millions of civilians.

“In the media there are always the failures, the weaknesses and we acknowledge the failures,” said Le Roy, “but at the same time our peacekeepers are working in extremely difficult conditions in places where nobody wants to go and they are in some cases risking their lives.”

In fact, UN peacekeepers have a nearly impossible mission – trying to maintain peace between warring factions with no peace agreement in place sometimes fielding ill-trained soldiers from less developed countries for whom the meager UN pay is better than no pay at all.

Despite this Le Roy noted successes in Liberia, where President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf praised their work; in Haiti where he said the mission prevented a descent into “total chaos”; and Ivory Coast where he recalled that UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay stated that without the presence of the UN troops, post-election violence earlier this year would have been much worse.

He acknowledged that during recent fighting in Sudan’s Southern Kordofan state, the UN was not able to protect some civilians but he said troops had established a safe area near their base in the town of Kadugli where thousands of civilians have sought safety and protection. 

Meanwhile, Southern Kordofan and other conflict zones will have to wait for the UN to name Le Roy’s successor, widely expected to be another Frenchman.