After World War I, the League of Nations was created to prevent wars through collective security. Negotiations were the key to settle disputes between countries, but the League of Nations was ineffective and a total failure for several reasons. The United States didn’t join because the Congress didn’t allow it and didn’t want the United States to engage in to European affairs. The Treaty of Versailles punished Germany unfairly. Countries started alliances and started doing secret treaties which was against the rule of the League of Nations. One of the main weaknesses of that the League of Nation was that they had economic problems, not enough money and financial support. Once the League of Nations failed, World War II happened.
After World War II, United Nations (UN) was created on the ashes of League of Nations to prevent another such war. The UN has six main organs, General Assembly, Security Council and Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), Trusteeship Council, the International Court of Justice, and the UN Secretariat. The General Assembly is the main deliberator in policymaking and the representative organ of the UN. The Security Council is mainly responsible for the peacekeeping and security and ECOSOC is the financial division of the UN. The Trusteeship Council is responsible for the supervising of the eleven trust territories for it to self-govern and independence. The International Court of Justice mediates disputes between countries to settle conflicts. And lastly, the Secretariat sets agendas for the UN’s decision-making bodies.
In this paper we will focus on the Security Council’s role in peacekeeping’s history, operations, and success and failures. UN peacekeeping arose during the Cold War which frequently paralyzed the Security Council. Peacekeeping was primarily limited to maintaining ceasefires and stabilizing situations on the ground, providing crucial support for political efforts to resolve conflict by peaceful means. Those missions consisted of unarmed military observers and lightly armed troops with primarily monitoring, reporting and confidence-building roles. The first generation of Peacekeeping personnel were called the Blue Helmets. These Blue Helmets were basically a buffer between two fighting sides.
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During the Cold War, a lot of peacekeeping operations were dispatched to the Middle East and Africa because of the decolonization. These operations were in Kashmir and Palestine in 1948. It was formalized in 1956 during the Suez Canal Crisis between France, England, and Egypt. As France and England was on one side and Egypt had the backing of the USSR. So, the UN intervened and deployed the Blue helmets. This was a success for the UN because they prevented a war. On the other hand, the Republic of Congo saw another face of the UN. The Republic of Congo was one of the colonies of Belgium.
The state wanted independence, but the UN worked against the population and siding with Belgium. The UN was an organization run by Western powers to get pushed their agenda and gain more power. Peacekeeping lost its credibility in Congo. The killing of Patrice Lumumba marked UN’s first-generation peacekeeping as a total failure. With the end of the Cold War, the strategic context for UN Peacekeeping changed dramatically. The second generation of Peacekeeping comes into play. The UN shifted and expanded its field operations from “traditional” missions involving generally observational tasks performed by military personnel to complex “multidimensional” enterprises.
Today’s multidimensional peacekeeping operations are called upon not only to maintain peace and security, but also to facilitate the political process, protect civilians, assist in the disarmament, demobilization and reintegration of former combatants, support the organization of elections, protect and promote human rights and assist in restoring the rule of law. These multidimensional missions were designed to ensure the implementation of comprehensive peace agreements and assist in laying the foundations for sustainable peace. The nature of conflicts also changed over the years. UN Peacekeeping was originally developed as a means of dealing with inter-state conflicts but is increasingly being applied to civil wars.
UN Peacekeepers were now increasingly asked to undertake a wide variety of complex tasks. From helping to build sustainable institutions of governance, to human rights monitoring, to security sector reform, to the disarmament, demobilization and reintegration of former combatants. Although the military remained the backbone of most peacekeeping operations, there were now many faces to peacekeeping including administrators, economists, officers, legal experts, human rights monitors, civil affairs and governance specialists, humanitarian workers, and communications and public information experts.
After fall of the USSR, a lot of independent nations were created that had internal conflict within. From 1992-1995, Bosnia was going through an internal war, where the UN went to bring peace. It was one of the bloodiest massacres, the UN was responsible for protecting the Bosnian Muslims from Bosnian Serb forces in Srebrenica, where UN declared a town and area free from any kind of attack. Bosnian Serb forces came from different directions and killed almost 8 thousand Muslim men and boys. Another failure of the UN was in Rwanda, where the UN peacekeeping did not do enough to prevent the genocide that killed almost one million people.
Another one was in Somalia, where for the first time the UN peacekeepers went in as a humanitarian helpers or intervention but the faced a difficult reception by the opposing side which killed some peacekeepers leading the UN to withdraw. After all these failures the UN said that its personnel can carry arms and protect some specific structures. The UN did see some success, Sierra Leone was one of them. UN peacekeeping forces went there to bring peace, settle the conflict after a bloody civil war and they were successful at that. Burundi was another site that UN peacekeeping forces delivered a success. By recovering decades of ethnic war. Then they started to help the country as well to go through a fair election.
The UN said we just cannot be just a peacekeeping factor we have to be proactive and build the nation, that’s when the third generation of peacekeeping (2000s-Now) came in. The idea of Responsibility to Protect came into play. The third generation was more about nation building, human rights, protecting the indigenous people. Afghanistan can be used as an example of where the third-generation peacekeeping forces’ job is mostly to build the government system, judicial system, courts, law and order, bureaucracy and administrations. The issue with the third-generation peacekeeping is that if the UN leaves the country then the state would collapse.
Peacekeeping is expensive because it requires funding or countries to volunteer to send peacekeeping troops. Sanctions are placed on countries in various forms such as economic to punish or restrain countries. Sometimes these sanctions don’t work because there’s always going to be a dealer to do business with. The UN doesn’t take sides but if one of the parties violate international law, the UN intervenes.
Social programs and projects are preventative ways to avoid war. When two members of the UN have conflict with one another they should present a report to the UN. They will follow steps in 1st Negotiations which direct dissuasions between two countries to settle the problem. The next step is 2nd Good Offices. A third party provides space for the two countries to sit alone and talk it out. Israel and Palestine had Norway act as a third party and provided space for them settle their problems.
If this doesn’t work, then move on to the next step 3rd Inquiring. Since the two countries cannot agree then they get a neutral team to find the obstacle and solution. The next step is 4th Mediation. This is when the third party would suggest the terms of settlement. The mediator directly gets involved. Tries to find a compromise to find solution and both countries agree. 5th Conciliation has the third party find a legal agreement to why should both countries agree on the terms of settlement provided by the third party. Since each state is a sovereign state, they can deny accepting the terms of settlement.
Next is 6th Arbitration. If you agree to this step it means you are going to agree to the terms and you cannot say no. A group judges or countries provide a solution to both parties and both parties must accept it. Let’s say the both don’t agree on one of them does not agree then the security general gets a peacekeeping operation to keep the peace between the countries. There is another process called Judicial Settlement, is a process when there is no need to go to war against each other but there are some problems between the two countries then the court would settle it.
