Events

Global AI Frontier Lab Seminar: Observations on the Opportunities and Challenges of Operationalizing AI for Social Good in UN Peace Operations

Speaker: James D’Ercole

Location: 1 MetroTech Center

Date: Monday, February 9, 2026

This talk is in a personal capacity and not as a UN representative.  The talk touches on the personal experiences and privileges of working for the UN and the Department of Peace Operations (DPO), then highlights the Social Innovation and Special Projects (SISP) team’s mission: to capture and scale practical field innovations that strengthen peacekeeping and deliver durable benefits to communities. The core of the session explores a new Real-Time Translation initiative designed for low-resource languages and mission realities: intermittent connectivity, diverse contingents, and high-stakes community engagement. The project aims to complement (not replace) human interpreters, expanding access to safer, more inclusive communication and improving situational awareness, information integrity, and accountability. Using South Sudan as an anchor pilot project, the project will connect the dots between “innovation” and implementation: how data, partnerships, and local co-design can turn operational needs into scalable capabilities across missions

Speaker Bio:
James D’Ercole leads the Policy, Evaluation and Training Division (DPET), Policy Best Practices Section’s (PBPS) Social Innovation and Special Projects workstream within the Department of Peace Operations. In this role, he helps shape the social innovation portfolio, strengthening the UN’s approach to identifying, testing, and scaling practical innovations that address operational needs in the field. James has worked at the intersection of operations and innovation across field missions and UN Headquarters. His current focus is applied AI for improving communications in peace operations: building evidence, piloting in real conditions, and scaling approaches that measurably improve decision-making and outcomes.

James brings over two decades of experience in UN peacekeeping, spanning both field missions and Headquarters. In mission settings, he has led multidisciplinary, multinational teams in Afghanistan, Liberia, and Timor-Leste, in both substantive and support roles. His leadership positions include Head of Provincial Office (Uruzgan Province, Afghanistan), Deputy Chief of the Joint Mission Analysis Center (Liberia), and Chief of Regional Administration/Regional Administrator (Timor-Leste)—where he combined operational delivery with innovation, including launching community-focused Quick Impact Projects, strengthening civil-military coordination, advancing women’s participation in governance, and piloting initiatives later scaled across missions.

Earlier in Liberia, James also served as Humanitarian Affairs Officer and Monitoring and Strategic Coordination Officer, contributing to early peacekeeping guidance on civil-military coordination and supporting post-conflict governance recovery. At Headquarters, he supported mission start-ups, transitions, and drawdowns (including Mali, CAR, and Burundi) through the Department of Field Support, and most recently worked in DPET’s Strategic Force Generation Cell, helping build Troop Contributing Countries (TCC) capacity. Earlier in his career, he worked extensively with NGOs and UN entities (including the International Rescue Committee, Merlin, UNFPA, and UNOPS) supporting emergency health, governance, and development programmes in Sudan (Darfur), Cambodia, and Timor-Leste.