Peacekeeping

The Charter of the United Nations calls upon the peoples of the world "to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security", and charges the Security Council with the task of "determining the existence of any threat to the peace and deciding what measures shall be taken".

Although peacekeeping is one of the quintessential UN functions it is mentioned only briefly in the UN Charter. Peacekeeping was never mentioned in the Charter as one of the tools to be employed by the United Nations. Yet it took only three years for this whole new technique to be conceived: that of using troops under UN command to keep disputing countries or communi­ties from fighting while peacemaking efforts are pursued. This technique of keeping peace was to be implemented 13 times in the UN's first 40 years. Since then, 40 new missions have been created, expanding the concept of peacekeeping dramatically.

Peacekeeping originated and evolved on а largely ad hoc basis. Each operation has been tailor-made to meet the demands of а specific conflict. As а concept, peacekeeping lies somewhere in between Chapters VI and VII of the Charter of the United Nations. Chapter VI outlines specific means which countries may use to settle disputes: negotia­tions, inquiry, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement, resort to regional institutions or arrangements or other peaceful means. Chapter VII provides for enforcement action by UN member states, including the use of armed force or other collective measures for dealing with "threats to peace".

What is peacekeeping?

Simply put, peacekeepers are people helping the parties to а conflict to resolve their dif­ferences peacefully. The presence of these people, soldiers, military observers or civilian police, encourage hostile groups not to use arms and instead to keep negotiating for peaceful settlement of disputes.

Most UN peacekeepers - often referred to as "blue helmets" because of the colour of the helmets they wear while on duty - have been soldiers, volunteered by their Governments to apply military discipline and training to the task of restoring and main­taining peace: monitoring ceasefires, separating hostile forces and maintaining buffer zones. Civilian police officers, electoral observers, human rights monitors and other civil­ians have joined UN peacekeepers in recent years. Their tasks range from protecting and delivering humanitarian assistance to helping former opponents carry out complicated peace agreements.

Traditionally, peacekeeping operations fall into two main categories: observer mis­sions [9] and peacekeeping forces [10].

The first UN peacekeeping operation - the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO), аn observer mission - was established in 1948, in the Middle East.

Earlier in 1947, the United Nations adopted а plan to divide Palestine and create а Jewish, and аn Arab State. On 15 May 1948, the British administrative power formally ended its control over Palestine, and within 24 hours the State of Israel was proclaimed. Fierce hostilities broke out immediately between the Arab and Jewish communities. Count Bernadotte of Sweden, who was appointed by the United Nations to mediate the conflict, was able to negotiate а ceasefire. But as the hostilities continued and the number of Palestinian refugees fleeing Israel grew, the Security Council decided to create а Truce Commission to supervise the cease fire. Count Bernadotte was to be assisted in this by а group of military observers. However, Count was assassinated in the Israeli-held sector of Jerusalem on 17 September 1948. Не was succeeded by Ralph Bunehe of the United States, who took over as acting mediator. Не directed the military observers and laid down the operation procedure.

Today, more than 50 years later, UNTSO remains in force, helping to keep реаcе between Israel and its Arab neighbors.

How does а peacekeeping mission start?

Peacekeeping operations are normally set up by the Security Council, the UN organ with primary responsibility for maintaining international peace and security. The Council decides the operation's size, its overall objectives and its time frame. As the United Nations has no military or civilian police force of its own, member states decide whether to par­ticipate in а mission and, if so, what personnel and equipment they are willing to offer. Under the present structure, it can take considerable time for the actual forces to be authorized and reach their destination.

In some cases, peacekeepers have been sent to places where there was no реасе to keep. In Sierra Leone, while monitoring а peace agreement, contempt rather than cooper­ation was experienced by UN soldiers who were abducted; some were later killed. In Somalia, the parties repeatedly violated ceasefire agreements, and UN personnel became targets for murder, kidnapping and intimidation. Those who committed these crimes knew well that casualties can undermine support for а peacekeeping operation among the nations providing troops for it. Even in cases where there was а peace agreement, as in Angola and in Cambodia, peacekeepers have had to contend with recalcitrant rebel groups for whom war was а profitable enterprise, since these groups controlled valuable export commodities, such as diamonds, drugs and timber.

How have peacekeeping operations changed in recent years?

The traditional concept of UN peacekeeping, as it was first developed, was to deploy in а "buffer zone" separating fighting forces, e.g. in the Golan Heights between Israeli and Syrian forces.

Today, its meaning has changed, its role has widened and its responsibility has broadened. Most peacekeeping operations now are multidimensional, requiring each to carry out а variety of functions involving peacemaking [11] and peace-building [12].

The nature of conflict has changed in recent years. It is а complex mix of inter-state and internal conflicts: their roots may be essentially internal, but they are complicated by cross-border involvement, either by State or non-State actors. And their consequences can quickly become international, because of destabilizing refugee flows as well as the dan­gers posed by factions pursuing each other across borders. This is what happened in recent years in Sierra Leone, Angola, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (for­merly Zaire) and the Sudan.

Practically in all cases, the United Nations had to tackle а number of challenges concurrently: helping to maintain ceasefires and to disarm and demobilize combatants; assisting the parties to build or strengthen vital institutions and processes and respect for human rights, so that all concerned can pursue their interests through legitimate chan­nels rather than on the battlefield; providing internal monitoring of elections following electoral reform to ensure that the reforms will take effect; providing humanitarian assis­tance to relieve immediate suffering; and laying the groundwork for longer-term economic growth and development through interim administration on the understanding that nо post-conflict system can long endure if it fails to improve the lot of impoverished people.

According to the Secretary-General, the United Nations can claim significant successes among its peace operations in the last decade or so, beginning with Namibia in the late 1980s, and including Mozambique, El Salvador, the Central African Republic, Guatemala, Eastern Slavonia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and, at least partially, Cambodia. These operations helped lead to, for example, Namibian independence; demo­cratic elections in Mozambique; far-reaching political reform in El Salvador; and new human rights protections in Guatemala.

While there have been successes, there have also been tragic failures, none more so than Rwanda and the fall of Srebrenica. With the wide range of responses or lack of response to each situation that arises, the structural weaknesses are apparent. The most serious areas are:

· Delays in the deployment of forces;

· The small number of military standby arrangements that are in а high state of readi­ness;

· The difficulty of recruiting qualified civil personnel for missions, such as police officers, judges or people to run correctional institutions to focus only on law ­enforcement needs.

The system for launching operations has sometimes been compared to а volunteer fire department, but that description is too generous. Every time there is а fire, the United Nations must first find fire engines and the funds to run them before there can be any start to dousing the flames. Тhe present system relies almost entirely on last-minute, ad hoc arrangements that guarantee delay, with respect to the provision of civilian personnel even more so than military.

For many years now, the United Nations has been seeking to build а reliable system in which trained and equipped troops are available immediately after the Security Council's decision to establish an operation. Under the so-called "standby" arrangements, more than 80 countries have identified more than 80,000 troops that could be available for service.

However, Member States can still decline to participate, which means that standby arrangements are somewhat like traveller's cheques with only onе signature: until the owner countersigns, the currency cannot be used. In practice, standby arrangements have not proved themselves to be enough to meet the challenge of rapid deployment.

Дата добавления: 2014-12-29