Intervention Of The Un Security Council

Thesis: The role of the United Nations has changed from being primarily an international peacekeeping force to primarily a humanitarian organization.

Thesis: The role of the United Nations has changed from being primarily an international peacekeeping force to primarily a humanitarian organization.

For a mission to be peacekeeping, the UN needs to be invited by at least one side, and more commonly two. The forces on a peacekeeping mission are usually lightly armed in order to prevent them from acting aggressively, while also confirming its role as a peacekeeper that is neutral. The main role of the peacekeepers is to act as a buffer and report when a country violates a ceasefire. The peacekeeping force enters after the conflict has started and its mission is to fulfill the mandate provided by the council. Lately peacekeeping missions have focused more on aid and state building rather than just preventing conflict. Recently there have been calls for the UN to move from peacekeeping to peace enforcement in some situations. Peace enforcement usually requires a larger, better, and heavier equipped force that won’t just keep the peace, but enforce it if it has too. With peace enforcement, the UN would like to stop more conflicts before they start because the threat of a large UN force being called in might make some countries question going on the offensive in a war. For a peace enforcement mission to be successful, the orders and mandate given must be very clear to the troops so that they can respond in war in real time and not be held up in bureaucracy. Peace enforcement also doesn’t require the force to be impartial or to find the aggressor, but to work in the most efficient way possible to end the fighting.

Sierra Leone had been considered a fragile state even before its civil war from 1991-2002, this is because it had “weak capacity and will to provide security and deliver services to its population” (Pickering, 2009, p20). The decade during the civil war was overwhelmed by huge human rights abuses, lack of coherent governments, weak social security structures and masses of violence (Evoe, 2008, p2).. A number of peace efforts were generated by international institutions, none of which were extensively effective throughout all of Sierra Leone. Despite these difficulties, the intervention in Sierra Leone is considered a noteworthy success for the United Nations peacebuilding mission. The main objective of peacebuilding missions is to ‘rebuild’ failing and weak states (Cubitt, 2013, p91) and to “prevent violence from recurring in countries that are just emerging from civil conflict” (Paris, 2002, p637). The UN mission in Sierra Leone is widely regarded as an example of successful peacebuilding in a war torn country. The mission facilitated a transition from, a failing state to a moderately peaceful state. This mission is held as an example of successful intervention, and is often used as a means to justify the benefits of UN peacebuilding and peacekeeping missions.

In cases such as Iraq and Afghanistan the United States military assumed a huge role for the distribution of disaster and humanitarian assistance alongside their military objectives. If foreign militaries are carrying out humanitarian aid alongside military objectives, then there is no way that aid can be supplied to whoever is in need in ways that are impartial, neutral and independent. This new system whereby foreign militaries are responsible for supplying aid has created huge security problems for not only the military, but for the people who are receiving aid. Opposing factions to foreign military time and time again in Afghanistan and Iraq have targeted civilians receiving aid to further their own agenda. 7

The United States has been challenging on deciding how deep it wants to engage in controversial global peacemaking conflicts and whether or not U.S. troops’ lives should be put in danger for the so-called peacekeeping affairs . Events in Somalia between 1992 and 1994 threw that argument into sharp relief.

“The United Nations was never intended to be a utopian exercise. It was meant to be a collective security system that worked” stated former secretary-general of the United Nations (U.N.) Kofi Annan in the 2004 Report of the High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change. Although, peacekeeping operations are not mentioned in the U.N. Charter it is evident that it is an essential global security tool that has been deterring International conflicts ever since World War II. This paper argues that while U.N. peacekeeping operations are beneficial in terms of aiding to resolve conflicts around the world, there are severe limitations that global peacekeeping faces. Critical, realist, and postmodernist scholars question the efficacy and have competing

The fact that the United Nations failed to prevent the Rwandan genocide is unavoidable. Nevertheless, due to this atrocious event, the UN has learnt an important lesson so that it can avoid further more of genocides. The Rwandan genocide consisted around 800,000 Tutsi’s that got massacred by the Hutu extremists for 100 days. After the UN reflected and learned from the massacre in Rwanda, the UN announced to establish and work as Responsibility to Protect; To intervene when a country is involved with atrocious acts, such as genocides (Bryce-Pease, 2014). Romeo Dallaire, a former general of the United Nations Mission In Rwanda, argues that the UN has not learnt much or reformed its peacekeeping methods, since many conflicts still exists (Bryce-Pease,

Peacekeeping operation is led by the Department, and works to create the conditions for lasting peace in a country torn by conflict” (UN Staff, 2003). Military, police and civilian personnel, those who work to deliver security, political and early peacebuilding support consists of peace keeping operation. Currently, there are sixteen peacekeeping operations and one special political mission – the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) – led by the Department of Peacekeeping Operations(UN Staff, 2013).

Disarmament , demobilization and reintegration are three major aspects of post -conflict consolidation that have been displayed obviously in the authorization of peacekeeping operations over the last twenty years. Disarmament is the collection, documentation, control and disposal of small arms ,ammunition ,explosives and light and heavy weapons from combatants and from the civilian population. Demobilization is the discharge of active combatants from the armed forces and groups which includes a phase of “reinsertion that provides short term assistance to ex-combatants. Reintegration is defined as the process in which ex-combatants acquire civilian status and gain sustainable employment and income. It is also a political, social and economic process that has an accessible time frame which is generally taking place in local communities. This clearly illustrates that world peace can exist among countries

“Give War a Chance” is an article written by the American economist, historian and military strategist Edward Nicolae Luttwak in 1999, in the American magazine Foreign Affairs. It make an easily understandable “buzz”, since its main assumption is that most kind of peacekeeping or humanitarian operations are, in an objective point of view, a bad thing for the peace, and that it tends, paradoxically, to slower its establishment. We will analyze here the main hypothesis that Luttwak is developing among the article, the first one being the destruction of the legitimacy usually accorded to peacekeeping operations, led by the UN or by other military organizations, and the second one being the obstacle to a durable peace establishment, created

Essay Question: It has been argued that the Security Council needs to be reformed. Analyse at least two major arguments in favour of reform and evaluate the likelihood of their implementation

In order to understand the concept behind peacekeeping we have to first look at the history of this UN term and how it got established. The initial kick-off year was 1948 (un.org) when the Security Council deployed troops to the Middle East in order to observe the region. It was the outcome of the creation of the state Israel and the rest of the land piece was given and left over to the Palestinian Arabs. The Arab society and the Arab Nation leaders did not accept this division which caused the conflict. At first the UN sent only observers and peaceful troops to the region

The United Nations, with its rigid moral and political limitations against force, has become a benchmark of peace and a social achievement of modern times. From war torn Europe, the United Nations developed from five major powers with an initial goal to prevent the spread of warfare through peaceful means and to establish and maintain fundamental human rights. Through the past fifty years, this organization has broadened its horizons with auxiliary organizations from peace keeping missions to humanitarian aid, to economic development. However, in a modern example of ethnic cleansing, the UN faces new a new role as a bystander as its power is bypassed by NATO forces. The UN, however, promises to be an

Humanitarian intervention has been widely debated over the last couple of decades, causing arguments to rise of what constitutes humanitarian intervention and if the Responsibility to Protect doctrine has become to politicized to be reliable. These accounts are backed-up on how interventions are being implemented through-out the world in various intrastate and international conflicts. Humanitarian intervention and R2P have produced debates on the morality, legality, and operational credibility the organizations now retain. Along with these debates, concerns of NATO and the Security Council’s actions bring to light the concern if humanitarian intervention can be relied on in effort of peace. These questions facilitate concern and instability throughout the world, and breeds inability for peace-efforts to be conducted. As such, humanitarian intervention is a crucial effort towards peace; it subsequently undermines the issues surrounding sovereignty and the idea that sovereignty is the utmost importance to a state’s livelihood. For humanitarian intervention and R2P to succeed, a reform needs to be implemented within the system; sovereignty should not be held authoritatively and states should be held accountable for their actions; regardless of their allies’ influential opinions.