Virtual peacekeeping: Empathy in action

DW (English)

With VR, we accompany UN peacekeepers to South Sudan. Could a VR presentation like this also help politicians make decisions on the future of the mission?

Transcript

00:00Follow a herder and his livestock in South Sudan?

00:04Watch peacekeepers treat his animals all in virtual reality.

00:09This VR experience was created by the UN to bring viewers up close.

00:14Its peacekeepers have been stationed here since the country gained independence from

00:18Sudan in 2011 after decades of civil war.

00:23In February 2025, Security Council members were the first to be transported from New

00:28York to South Sudan, seeing the work of the Blue Helmets up close.

00:34The goal?

00:35To evoke empathy and understanding for the mission and to show why it should continue.

00:41The journey takes the viewer across the country.

00:44To a severely flooded area where peacekeepers have built and maintain a dike.

00:50To a UN site sheltering over 40,000 displaced people.

00:56And to a school where peacekeepers work as teachers.

01:00For Nicholas Haysom, head of the mission, the VR experience is a success.

01:05It gives you a real tangible sense of what peacekeepers do, which is often lost in discussions and formulae,

01:17presentations.

01:18When we were engaging with council members, there was a much greater degree of sympathy

01:24with the peacekeeping project than there had been in the city.

01:28Today, anyone visiting the UN headquarters in New York can take part.

01:34I really liked the storytelling of it all.

01:36I really liked being immersed in what the discussions looked like, what the conversations looked like.

01:42You could think better of like, how is it to be there, right on location, to teleport to you

01:48in a totally different way than conventional TV or anything like that.

01:52A novel insight for the public.

01:59But for the Security Council, it's part of their critical decision-making process.

02:05In 2026, they decide, will the mission continue or is this the final chapter?

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