Peacekeeping Operations

Peacekeeping Operations

UN Peace Operations

Today, personnel in UN peace operations mediate among local, regional, and international stakeholders to prevent the outbreak, resumption, or spread of fighting. They promote confidence-building measures to help a peace process take root. They help implement peace agreements or cease-fires, including through monitoring of and voluntary disarmament and demobilization of combatants. Many UN peace operations enable the delivery of humanitarian and development assistance. They can play an important and direct role in protecting civilians, including from sexual and gender-based violence, and in human rights monitoring. They support the conduct of elections and build host government capacity to govern effectively, including by promoting human rights and the rule of law. Where applicable, UN peace operations support the monitoring and implementation of multilateral sanctions and justice and accountability mechanisms, which include the investigation and prosecution of atrocity crimes. In select and exceptional cases, UN peace operations even conduct offensive military operations against armed groups that act as spoilers outside of a peace process, seek to thwart the implementation of peace agreements, threaten weak but legitimate governments, and perpetrate violence and atrocities against civilians.

United Nations peace operations have now reached all-time high levels of cost, complexity, and risk — and the international demand for them is only growing. The UN currently manages 16 peacekeeping missions, with more than 100,000 uniformed personnel and more than 19,000 civilian staff deployed globally. The UN also currently has 11 field-based political missions and peace-building support offices in Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia. In addition, the African Union and African sub-regional organizations have recently deployed UN Security Council-authorized missions to Somalia, Mali, and the Central African Republic in advance of or alongside UN peace operations.

United Nations and regional peace operations face significant challenges. Nevertheless, these operations are among the most meaningful forms of international burden-sharing to address the global challenges that exist today. More than 120 countries now contribute military or police personnel for UN peace operations, and all military units today are provided by countries other than the United States.

Without major reforms, critical shortcomings in the design, planning, resourcing, execution, and oversight of UN peace operations will severely diminish the effectiveness of any support and assistance.

UN peace operations are not ordinarily designed and equipped to deploy into situations of active armed conflict where the main protagonists (and their external backers) are not yet ready to stop fighting. Even when there is a partial peace in place, UN peacekeepers can face severe difficulties when opposed and overmatched by well-armed and organized adversaries seeking to deny their involvement and presence. As such, peace operations cannot substitute for diplomatic solutions to end a war, nor for more forceful military interventions that need to be carried out in non-permissive environments by individual states or coalitions that possess the will and capacity to do so. Nor should UN peace operations be treated as the sum total of the necessary international assistance to fragile and conflict-affected states. Such states usually require a broad range of political, economic, development, and security assistance provided by many different international actors, well before peacekeepers arrive, throughout the time they remain in theater, and long after they depart.

Peacekeeping Forces

Further Reading

 

Peacekeeping Operations

Further Reading

Literature Review on Peacekeeping Operations

In the Encyclopedia of Public Administration and Public Policy, [1] Chiara Ruffa offers the following summary about the topic of Peacekeeping Operations: Since 1948, peacekeeping has played an important role in preventing, keeping, and enforcing peace. Indeed, peacekeeping is today one of the most important instruments for conflict prevention and conflict management. This entry provides first a definition of peace operations and a typology of its different kinds. Second, it elaborates in greater depth on decision-making processes about peace missions and implementing these missions; finally it discusses whether peacekeeping actually keeps peace.

Resources

Notes and References

  1. Entry about Peacekeeping Operations in the Encyclopedia of Public Administration and Public Policy (2015, Routledge, Oxford, United Kingdom)

See Also

Further Reading

  • Global Encyclopedia of Public Administration, Public Policy, and Governance (2018, Springer International Publishing, Germany)

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