At this very moment, UN peacekeepers around the world are risking their lives in the name of peace.

These men and women in blue helmets – more than 100,000 in total, making them the second largest deployed military in the world – can be found in 16 of the world's most dangerous conflict areas. They are stationed in such hot spots as Lebanon, Haiti and Sudan, and are fighting to preserve and ensure peace.

Sometimes that means disrupting drug trafficking and maintaining law and order. Sometimes it means disarming former combatants and disposing of mines. And sometimes it means organizing elections or helping countries develop legal frameworks to ensure continued justice. In any case, this work is critical to American national security interests, yet it often goes underappreciated in this country and elsewhere.

So this International Day of Peace (September 21), let's say thank you to our UN peacekeepers and show them we support their vital role in restoring global stability and security. Send a letter to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressing your gratitude for UN peacekeepers, and we'll deliver it on your behalf to missions currently operating worldwide.

[We will send this letter on your behalf to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and to all 16 UN peacekeeping missions currently in operation worldwide.]

Dear UN Peacekeepers,

We may be far from the 16 countries where all 100,000 of you are deployed, but our thoughts and thanks are with you. You are as far as East Timor, as close as Haiti, and spread throughout seven countries in Africa. The work you have done over the past 61 years has benefited the entire world, creating a more peaceful, stable and secure place for people to live.

[Your personal comments will be added here.]

Your work as peacekeepers is complicated and diverse: rebuilding societies wracked by violence; ensuring peaceful, fair elections; and maintaining law and order in some of the most volatile situations on earth. You face the daunting tasks of convincing armed groups to lay down their weapons and restoring the lives of thousands of children forced to become soldiers during war.

You create the conditions to bring warring parties to the negotiating table -- resulting in an amazing 172 ceasefires, peace accords and power-sharing agreements since 1945. You remove hundreds of thousands of mines from war zones all over the world, allowing communities to return home and rebuild their lives.

Your 61 years of hard work to bring peace to the world has produced extraordinary outcomes for millions of people.

We all have a vital stake in the work that you do. Individual governments simply cannot afford to -- nor would be advised to -- send their own troops to all of the places where you are deployed. With a budget of just $7 billion annually you operate in harsh climates to resolve seemingly intractable conflicts and build hope and trust that peace can emerge, endure and even thrive everywhere you are deployed.

Thousands of you -- from 118 countries across the world -- have given your life in the service of pursuing peace. Your work is heroic, and on behalf of all of those who have benefited, directly or indirectly, from six decades of UN peacekeeping: THANK YOU.

Sincerely,
[Your name here]