The Pros And Cons Of U. N. Peacekeeping

The United Nations’ most widely known purpose is to prevent conflicts within and between countries. However, the United Nations has failed to prevent a plethora of conflicts, resulting in catastrophic consequences. An ongoing conflict, The Somali Civil War began in 1991. In 1992, as the Somali Civil War crisis worsened, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) sanctioned the Unified Task Force (UNITAF) to initiate a safe and protective environment to allow humanitarian efforts to proceed. However, the UN’s efforts completely failed, resulting in a crisis.

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

The United Nations was handed the sacred duty of, in its own words, “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.” While the UN was able to prevent another great war, and to an extent other large regional wars, it has still not met its key tenet of saving generations from the scourge of war. I believe that the UN has failed to promote peace successfully in the world, and its job as facilitator of peace hasn’t been met when countless conflicts have continued all over the globe. I believe that the UN has failed to promote world peace because, it has failed to create a system where collective security is followed by member states, it has failed to create a formula where peacekeeping can work successfully and consistently, and has

The United Nations efforts in peace-keeping operations in Rwanda had many setbacks and was considered to be a failure for many reasons. One of the reasons being the International community’s failure to make a distinction between a civil war and genocide in Rwanda. (Khan, 196) This meant that the little effort presented by the UN department of peacekeeping operations was often too late. In previous years the world has witnessed countless civil wars which have taken place in Somalia, Liberia, Haiti, Georgia and Angola. However, genocide was not present in these wars and was uncommon. (Khan, 196) According to Alain Destexhe, Rwanda was only the third experience of genocide in this century. Thus, with the ongoing tensions and unrest, dating back to 1990, between the Hutu-led government and the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) it was evident that Rwanda was on course for a civil war but what was failed to realise was that a genocide was also taking place. (Khan, 197)

The formation of the United Nations in 1945 was marked by an international outcry to ‘never again’ idly bear witness to the genocidal atrocities capable of man, as so harshly revealed in the nature of the Holocaust. In doing so, all member states actively sought to facilitate discussion in the United Nations as a world forum, in order to achieve both international and intra-national security. While the United Nations has achieved various successes in the international community, the international entity and its’ member states are subject to various legal and moral flaws, weakening response to conflicts in the contemporary era of international relations. These failures are exemplified tragically in the response to the Rwandan genocide in

A few of the hundreds of NGO’s operating in Afghanistan include the World Health Organization, World Bank, British Agencies Afghan group, and Afghans for Civil Society. While each of these organizations takes on the battle in a different way, they are all aiming towards the same goal at the end of the fight; Peace for the Afghan people. Some of these organizations decide to take on this battle by aiding with things such as health care, agricultural development, building programs, emergency relief, or school reconstruction. Despite the efforts of these NGO’s, many problems have arisen, making it hard to maintain ideal structural stability for the organizations working within the state. A main concern for humanitarians across the globe is the “blurred line” that has occurred as a result of the inability to decipher between aid workers, and military troops. This has caused the Afghan people to become vary, and can result in a lack of trust for those trying to administer support. Western governments have also proceeded to voice the idea of the ‘comprehensive approach’ to peacekeeping. This approach focuses on the idea that militaries, aid workers, politicians and civilians should all work together to provide ‘complex solutions to complex emergencies.’ ("Civil-Military Relations in Afghanistan”). The inability to disentangle the

Bertram looks at the successes and failures of new UN peacekeeping, such as the successes in El Salvador and Cambodia and the failures in Somalia and Angola, and argues that the UN needs to do a better job at determining where peace can be built. She also argues that the UN must stop blurring the lines between traditional peacekeeping doctrine and new peacekeeping practices in order to effectively accomplish their goals. Bertram notes in her essay how these things are crucial in assuring the success of UN peace building. She also emphasizes how crucial success is by noting how much small failures can deter member states from acting as peace builders in UN

At its formation, the UN had inherited financial problems from its predecessor – the League of Nations (McDermott, 2000). Seventy years down the lane, financial problems have been at the core of the UN activities in peacekeeping missions. Thus, the issue of budgetary crisis with regards to financing old and new peacekeeping operations continue to persist. According to McDermott (2000), peacekeeping “have been both the making and near breaking of the organization.” On one hand, peacekeeping expansion from traditional peacekeeping to peacekeeping and now peacebuilding have contributed to the exponential growth of the organization. On the other hand, the spread out of peacekeeping increases cost and have overly

Herein lies the central dilemma of deploying armed force in humanitarian interventions for peace. I have talked about the good that can be brought about by peacekeeping forces, even suggesting that the United Nations Peacekeeping force in Rwanda should have intervened more proactively to prevent the genocide in 1994.

An example of positive peace are the UN Millennium Goals and current Sustainable Development Goals. Even though the UN haven't been successful at quenching war or conflict between groups, I would argue that the UN has been successful at promoting positive peace such as social equality, women's right to education, eradication of extreme poverty, ending world hunger etc. According to Galtung, positive peace is defined as "a social condition in which exploitation has been minimized or eradicated" as opposed to negative peace, which is just the absence of war. He mean that positive peace is the absence of structural violence. Based on his definition, I would also argue that the broad definition of human security (protection of the basic necessities

In chapter 35, The main topic was about Robust peacekeeping. Robust peace when UN peacekeepers would only interfere when there was political and operational means to implement. When reading that I pictured just a bunch of wars and fights going on without and enforcement to stop because it didn't seem like a “Big” enough reason. I'm not sure if that is inherently correct description of the reading but if so that seems like a big issue. I think about high school and all the useless drama if no teacher never interfered than major issues would occur. I believe the easiest way to solve a issue is facing the issue as soon as possible. The idea of Robust peacekeeping has been going on for years. Honestly, I’ve never in my life really heard of this.

It is taken for granted that the pursuit of peace is a worthy pursuit. We, the human race, have dedicated enormous efforts to that noble pursuit. The United Nations, one of the most important and powerful organizations in the world was created just for that purpose. The first article of the UN charter reads, “The Purposes of the United Nations are: To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace”.

“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

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

After the end of two World Wars, and the League of Nations’ failures to stop them, the world was desperately in need of a supranational organization, which will not only prevent conflicts and wars between nations, but would also promote friendly relations between them. As a global institution, United Nations (UN) has been responsible in the areas of economic development, alleviating poverty, promoting and maintenance of the Humans Rights, economic growth and related issues, International health, Justice and most importantly its peacekeeping missions. Firstly, this essay will analyze the Security Council’s Politics, structure, its purpose ensuring peace and security between the UN members, its functions, Powers and articles. Then, the roles of the permanent members of the Security Council will be discussed, with special attention given to the United States. Then the analysis UN’s Security Council actions and missions in Suez Canal and Korean War will analyzed and how UN’s efforts on how it is coping up with Intra-State conflict, especially terrorism that has become a new norm in violent conflicts. Then Humans Right missions in Afghanistan and Rwanda will be reviewed. Then the UN’s ambitious target, “The Millennium Development Goals”(MDGs) will be examined. It can be agreed that, overall, the UN has largely been successful and effective in delivering its roles and responsibilities, with few failures in its operation.