United Nations peacekeeping is a unique and dynamic
instrument developed by the Organization as a way to help countries torn by
conflict create the conditions for lasting peace. The first UN peacekeeping
mission was established in 1948, when the Security Council authorized the
deployment of UN military observers to the Middle East to monitor the Armistice
Agreement between Israel and its Arab neighbours. Since then, there have been a
total of 63 UN peacekeeping operations around the world.
The
term "peacekeeping" is not found in the United Nations Charter and
defies simple definition. Dag Hammarskjöld, the second UN Secretary-General,
referred to it as belonging to "Chapter Six and a Half" of the
Charter, placing it between traditional methods of resolving disputes
peacefully, such as negotiation and mediation under Chapter VI, and more
forceful action as authorized under Chapter VII.
Over the years, UN peacekeeping has evolved to meet the
demands of different conflicts and a changing political landscape. Born at the
time when the Cold War rivalries frequently paralyzed the Security Council, UN
peacekeeping goals were
With the end of the Cold War, the strategic context
for UN peacekeeping dramatically changed, prompting the Organization to shift
and expand its field operations from “traditional” missions involving strictly
military tasks, to complex “multidimensional” enterprises designed to ensure
the implementation of comprehensive peace agreements and assist in laying the
foundations for sustainable peace. Today’s peacekeepers 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.
The nature of conflicts has also changed over the
years. Originally developed as a means of dealing with inter-State conflict, UN
peacekeeping has been increasingly applied to intra-State conflicts and civil
wars. Although the military remain the backbone of most peacekeeping operations,
the many faces of peacekeeping now include administrators and economists,
police officers and legal experts, de-miners and electoral observers, human
rights monitors and specialists in civil affairs and governance, humanitarian
workers and experts in communications and public information.
UN peacekeeping continues to evolve, both
conceptually and operationally, to meet new challenges and political realities.
Faced with the rising demand for increasingly complex peace operations, the
United Nations in the past few years has been overstretched and challenged as
never before. The Organization has worked vigorously to strengthen its capacity
to manage and sustain field operations and, thus, contribute to the most
important function of the United Nations – maintaining international peace and
security.
Link
The website of the United Nations
Peacekeeping Department.
Related subjects
Peacekeeping forces
- individual countries
Stamp catalogue -
50th anniversary
Bangladesh
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