For our series of ‘Stories of People- and Planet-Centred Cooperation’ we interviewed David Curran from Coventry University’s Research Centre for Peace and Security about the value and importance of UN peacekeeping, an area with a bold vision but a chequered record of achieving human and sustainable security.
Most people are familiar with the blue helmets, demilitarised zones, and humanitarian aid provision as well as the disasters of some United Nations (UN) peacekeeping missions. Despite the problems, it is a story of dedication and commitment within the multilateral UN system to limit the horrific impact of war on civilians and to find ways to establish peace and security.
In the beginning…
Although not part of the UN Charter, peacekeeping missions were an early function of the UN in the period of decolonisation, making the UK’s role in the process an interesting one. Several of the first missions were in Britain’s former mandated territories and colonies, including Palestine and Kashmir in the late 1940s. The first armed peacekeeping mission was operationalised to oversee the withdrawal of British, French and Israeli troops from the Suez Canal Zone after they invaded Egyptian territory in 1956. This became the classic model for peacekeeping – smaller, ideally neutral states (Canada and Scandinavian countries in this case) overseeing the withdrawal of troops.
Peacekeeping has traditionally been seen to operate between Chapter VI and Chapter VII of the UN Charter. Chapter VI provides mechanisms to contribute to de-escalation, such as mediation and the ‘good offices’ of the Secretary General. Chapter VII allows for the use of military assets (under Article 42) to ‘maintain or restore international peace and security’. The establishment of the United Nations Emergency Force I (UNEF, the mission along the Egyptian-Israeli border) in 1956 was a creative process of managing the invasion of a sovereign state by another. Evolving from that early history was the ‘holy trinity’ of the basis for peacekeeping missions: the consent of the parties to conflict; the impartiality of the mission; and no recourse to the use of force unless in self-defence or in defence of the mission’s mandate.
The geopolitical divides during the Cold War meant that peacekeeping missions were deployed into a number of places but often lacked a coherent political strategy to encourage parties across the divide to find a sustainable solution. This had the impact of the peacekeeping missions imposing a ‘negative peace’ to stop violence occurring but without the diplomacy behind the scenes to sustainably resolve them. This has had the unintended consequence of creating ‘frozen conflicts’. Cyprus is a particularly clear example of this, where a demilitarised UN-patrolled ‘green zone’ separates two communities without a political resolution to the intra- and inter-state conflicts that divided them in 1974.
Post-Cold War vision and disaster
At the end of the Cold War, a space was created for reimagining multilateral systems and the agency of the international community. This was a time in which there was an almost evangelical mission to restore societies with the support of peacekeeping mandates. The aspirational Agenda for Peace (1992) covered everything from preventative diplomacy to peacekeeping and post-conflict peacebuilding. There was an expanded role for peacekeepers in supporting aspects of human security, such as supporting free elections and the peaceful transition of power.
Unfortunately, capacity to operationalise broader human security concerns in peacekeeping missions did not match aspirations and there is a list of peacekeeping catastrophes and tragedies with which many people are familiar. In Somalia, in 1993-1994, peace was hampered by the US forces attached to UNOSOM II using massive force both on the ground and from the air. The mission in Rwanda failed in 1994 after the withdrawal of Belgian troops who had suffered fatalities at the hands of the then Rwandan Government, resulting in a woefully inadequate force mid-genocide. The following year in Srebrenica, as the ethnic cleansing and genocide of Bosniaks began to unfold, UN peacekeepers failed to protect the designated safe area around it.
The vision for the role of peacekeeping to contribute positively to sustainable peace processes was shattered. The lack of capacity in terms of personnel and also the intellectual capacity or thinking behind the missions clearly needed addressing.
Enter Kofi Annan: From the late 1990s until today
Kofi Annan, UN Secretary General from 1997 to 2006 came from a peacekeeping background and drove through various resolutions that gave UN peacekeeping new focus and muscle.
A significant legacy of Annan’s era is the passing of ‘cross cutting resolutions’ in the UN Security Council during his tenure. In 1999 two resolutions were passed on the Protection of Civilians (1262 and 1296). This meant that as well as deploying to support political processes, missions were tasked to undertake civilian protection activities. This role has developed significantly and now has three main components: direct protection from force; protection through assistance (the delivery of aid); and protection through politics (such as ensuring peaceful elections and the transfer of power).
To add to this, historic Security Council Resolutions were also passed on Women and Peace and Security (1325), and Children and Armed Conflict (1261). All peacekeeping missions must refer to these three cross-cutting themes in their mandates.
At the same time, the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ (R2P) was developed within the UN. It has a somewhat less clear relationship with UN peacekeeping, given the key focus of peacekeeping on host state consent. Whilst Protection of Civilians achieves many aims of R2P (atrocity prevention is heightened if a peacekeeping mission is deployed, for instance), there is limited support from certain countries on the Security Council for R2P being operationalised through peacekeeping due to its perceived impingement on state sovereignty.
Where this relationship has been at its most problematic is where interventions are sought into territories where the state is unwilling or unable to protect its own civilians, and UN peacekeeping operations are identified as a possible policy solution. The UN’s problematic process of ‘inviting the consent’ of the Sudanese government to deploy a force in Darfur in the early 2000s is testament to this. Consent was not forthcoming, and when it did, it was for a UN-mandated African Union mission (UNAMID), whose deployment was far less effective than envisaged.
Other contexts have seen greater effectiveness for UN peacekeeping operations in protecting civilians, for instance, the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS). This operation was originally created to assist in state-building tasks. However, throughout 2013, increasing insecurity led to out-breaks of violence in the country, with the government itself becoming one of the belligerent groups. This had notable impacts on the mission, with over 70,000 civilians seeking refuge in UN bases. The UN Security Council duly reinforced the UNMISS operation with 5,500 troops and 440 police. As a result, the mandate for the operation was realigned to one which protects civilians purely through offering direct protection, guarding bases where civilians are sheltering. More recently, the UN’s UNIFIL Operation in Lebanon has demonstrated its commitment to civilian protection despite being targeted as a result of the Israel Defense Forces’ operations in Lebanon.
As budgets are squeezed, and large operations are downsizing, there is again reflection on how UN interventions build sustainable peace. With this in mind, one of the main debates around peacekeeping is on the primacy of politics. Can peacekeeping work if there is no diplomatic and political work going on to resolve the reasons for violence? Are they not doomed to failure? Or, at best, an uphill struggle?
Peacekeeping and Human Security
Human Security is built upon placing people and their safety ahead of national security. It requires dialogue and coordination among states and a willingness to work together constructively. United Nations peacekeeping is a signifier that human security concerns continue to be operationalised at the highest level despite notable challenges (including those self-inflicted by the UN’s own staff), state-based competition, and geopolitical shifts. The adaptability of the activity, and the UN’s attempts to learn lessons from failure to improve performance indicate an ongoing commitment to build sustainable peace in areas beset by violence.
Peacekeeping operations have contributed to building sustainable peace. UN interventions played a significant role in addressing regional conflict and violence in Liberia, Côte d’Ivoire and Sierra Leone, supporting long-term programmes of sustainable peace. Missions are also credited with having a role in contributing to a reduction in violence against civilians in areas of deployment. Moreover, UN peacekeepers continued their mission in Lebanon despite being fired on by the IDF. In the future, we may see more adaptable forms of UN intervention. Smaller, lighter footprint political missions are seen as a future manifestation of UN peacekeeping interventions, whilst the deployment of blue-helmet style operations is still discussed as an option to address current conflicts in, for example, Gaza and Ukraine.
Whilst peacekeeping is a tool created by the Security Council, its longevity is a result of a great deal of hard work undertaken in challenging situations. As with many of the successes of cooperation, the peacekeeping endeavour is built on the work of actors from grass roots community groups to international lawyers, NGOs diplomats and civil servants involved in developing the intellectual and practical framework for peacekeeping, pushing states to come together to work towards more sustainable security.
David Curran is an Associate Professor in the Research Centre for Peace and Security at Coventry University and the principal investigator of the Alternative Security Review project. David’s research investigates approaches to United Nations peacekeeping. He has authored a range of articles in this area, including its relationship with the United Kingdom.
The views and opinions expressed in posts on the Rethinking Security blog are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position of the network and its broader membership.
For this article, Dr David Curran was interviewed by Joanna Frew.
Image Credit: UN Peacekeeping via Flickr. The A peacekeeper from the Mongolian Battalion (MonBatt) of the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) provides security as the World Food Programme (WFP) drops food in Bentiu, South Sudan, October 2015.
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