UN Member States have been deploying 'Blue Helmets' (or peacekeepers) since 1948, so on the occasion of the International Day of UN Peacekeepers, marked annually on 29 May, we're spotlighting operations over the decades, from monitoring buffer zones in Asia to escorting aid trucks into Israeli exclaves in the Middle East.

Some missions were accomplished. Others continue today. Since the Organization's inception at the end of the Second World War, UN Member States have scrambled to 'save succeeding generations from the scourge of war' by deploying their collective efforts to prevent the kind of utter devastation that global conflict brought to Europe, Africa, Asia and beyond, especially with a view to stepping in before tensions escalate past a point of no return.