Peacekeeping and the United Nations

2013

As a body composed of the governments of the major nations on earth, the United Nations is a powerful diplomatic peace negotiator and world actor. Its ability to function as it was designed is of the utmost importance to international security. With the UN we have a chance to make peace a reality for the world; without it, we face a multitude of states acting in self-interest and at cross purposes. Through a comparison of current and past UN operations using the UN's own criteria for success, this paper highlights several inadequacies in current United Nations peacekeeping operations. This paper then examines the potential causes of this inadequacy and the potential consequences if it continues. Finally, there will be a consideration of policy options that the UN could pursue in order to address these problems which undermine its legitimacy and, in some cases, cost the world in human lives.

Academic Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies, 2019

The United Nations (UN) is mandated to maintain international peace and security. The UN attempts to achieve this mandate through different means including peacekeeping by deploying personnel and experts in conflict situations. The UN has adopted number of policies and mechanism to strengthen its peacekeeping operations. Although there are number of activities focusing on peacekeeping with notable successful operations, the UN still face issues and challenges which have been negatively influencing the efficiency, effectiveness and the success of its peacekeeping operations. This paper has attempted to examine the key activities of UN peacekeeping operations, their impact, and the major issues that negatively influence and challenge the peacekeeping operations. The study has found that the UN peacekeeping operations have worked effectively in managing conflict situations and establishing peace in many parts of the world. However, the shortcomings and issues particularly in terms of political, military and humanitarian aspects of the operations have negatively influenced the peacekeeping operations in achieving their targets successfully. The study urges the importance of policy and institutional reforms together with commitments of parties, institutions, and involving actors in order to strengthen peacekeeping operations and establish sustainable peace in many corners in the world.

Global Governance: A Review of Multilateralism and International Organizations

2015

IntroductionThe creation and the development of a peacekeeping function is one of the most crucial achievements of the United Nations (UN) towards materializing its mission of maintaining the international peace and security. The peacekeeping function of the UN which is known as "traditional" or "old" peacekeeping during the Cold War era includes simple activities such as monitoring the cease-fire agreements after the termination of the conflicts within the inter-state and intrastate conflicts notably the former.The current international agenda reveals that after the end of the Cold War, the traditional peacekeeping perception has undergone through significant changes. Both the principles and the activities included in the peacekeeping operations have been affected within the emergence of the new world of disorder. The new peacekeeping operations are more assertive and interventionist in nature in order to be capable of responding to the ethnic and religious intr...

A study of human security and robustness in peacekeeping then and now Abstract:

The nature of the United Nations (UN) peacekeeping operations has evolved considerably since 1948. Most contemporary conflict zones are full of violence, resulting in a large number of civilian casualties. So much so, that even the peacekeepers have now become major targets of violence and asymmetric threats. The complex environment in which these operations are conducted today is far more varied than ever before, and therefore to cope with it, peacekeeping organisations bring together disparate configurations of civilians, troops from armed forces and police under a unified political leadership. Military components, drawn from different countries, bring to the table a wide range of experience, capabilities and capacities. However, this diversity imposes significant challenges to integration, coherence and operational performance. The military component, which is primarily responsible to create a secure environment, is generally seen as not doing much to safeguard the lives of innocent civilians. Seized with this realty, a number of studies have already taken place to find ways to address these challenges. The United Nations Peacekeeping Challenge: The Importance of the Integrated Approach

Ezidinma Chinemerem David, 2020

The United Nations is a body or rather an organization of people. In a political tussle for power, the aim is to initiate a peace agreement between warring parties. It stands as the neutral body in every negotiation when called upon to preserve the rights of citizens when forcefully taken from them due to a situation of civil unrest in the nation. To achieve this, it created different sectors under itself to handle the various situations and types of needs that may occur in time of war. This paper discusses an essential part of the United Nations, for without it the organization might cease to exist.

Following closely the practice of peacekeeping, the literature on the subject has come in one small wave and then two larger ones. The first wave, during the Cold War, includes classic works focusing mainly on peacekeeping in wars between states. The second wave, at first inspired by the boom in peacekeeping shortly after the end of the Cold War, soon reflected disillusionment and focuses largely on failure and dysfunction, despite significant cases of success. The third and most recent wave also reflects a resurgence in peacekeeping but is newly concerned with systematic and methodologically rigorous analysis (both quantitative and qualitative) of basic empirical questions about the effects of peacekeeping and the sources of peacekeeping outcomes. Recent empirical studies have demonstrated peacekeeping's effectiveness in maintaining peace, but related questions persist concerning the use of force, transitional administrations, which organizations most effectively keep peace, perspectives of the " peacekept, " and effects on democratization.

Although the demand for UN peacekeepers shows little sign of abating, a sense of uncertainty and malaise continues to colour discussions about the future of UN peacekeeping. Of the many issues facing the UN High Level Panel on Peace Operations that was set up by Secretary-General in 2014, the use of force by UN peacekeepers is likely to attract particular attention. It is also likely to prove divisive, as it has proved to be both among member states and within the Secretariat. While there are steps that can be taken to strengthen the capacity of the UN to mount and conduct field operations, Mats Berdal and David Ucko argue that the way forward does not lie simply in entrusting UN forces with ever more 'robust' war-fighting mandates. Instead, more systematic attention needs to be given to the vital task of linking, in a strategically meaningful sense, the activities of UN peacekeepers to political processes aimed at bringing violent conflict to an end. Among other things, this will require far greater honesty than has been displayed to date among member states about their own responsibility in enabling the UN to do what they ask of it.