Is the UN with its peacekeeping operations, established half a century ago, an effective forum and tool in the contemporary world to face challenges of politicised nature in order to ensure international peace and security? A common way to conceptualise peace operations is to identify their characteristics and functions. Former Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali introduced “An Agenda For Peace” in 1992 where reference was made to peace operations, peace building and peace enforcement. Durch made another classification where four kinds of peace operations were identified: traditional peacekeeping, multidimensional peace operations, humanitarian intervention and peace enforcement. This chapter explores the various types of UN peacekeeping operations and explains the UN principles of Peacekeeping.
Peacekeeping
Different definitions of peacekeeping have been put forward in doctrine. Former Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali defined peacekeeping as:
“The deployment of a United Nations presence in the field, hitherto with the consent of all the parties concerned, normally involving United Nations military and/or police personnel and frequently civilians as well.”
Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld established the first UN peacekeeping force in 1956, UN Emergency Force (UNEF). In his report of this mission, he outlined the broad philosophy of peacekeeping that peace operations came to be subjected to. In this “Summary Study”, the Secretary- General enunciated the principles of traditional peacekeeping: Consent, Neutrality or Impartiality and Minimum Use of Force. The most common type of peacekeeping involves deployment of armed troops under UN command with an aim to contain and resolve military conflicts. For a certain time, traditional peacekeeping forces tend to stabilize a particular situation by acting as a calming influence through physically separating the belligerent forces. Consent from their host state is necessary for their presence on its territory and they are inhibited to take enforcement action to prevent a determined aggression. They also require a continued support of the Security Council in order to operate. With the development of the world, peacekeeping has gone from its original intent to tackle inter-state conflicts to more recently deal with civil wars and intra-state conflicts. Of previously having had almost exclusively military deployments, contemporary peace missions have expanded to include civilian personnel as civil functions increasingly are performed by these operations. In recent years, a development towards an increasingly active role of the UN has been noted and peacekeeping missions have been extended to incorporate enforcement activities.
It is easy to be confused by the multitude of terms and definitions related to peacekeeping. Terms such as peacekeeping, peacemaking, peace building, peace enforcement and multifunctional peacekeeping are enlisted in modern literature. They all refer to response to threats to peace and security. Each term emphasizes specific doctrine or certain implemented actions. In this thesis, the term peacekeeping refers to all peace operations. The term peace operation is also used as a general language. Peace enforcement refers to a more aggressive type of peace operation, aiming at compelling non- cooperating parties to cease hostilities and endeavour to negotiate peace, more on this in section 3.2 below.
Peace Enforcement
The concept “peace enforcement” spread after the end of the Cold War. It can be defined as ensuring implementation of agreements, such as peace agreements or ceasefire agreements. This implementation includes application of incentives and disincentives, among them robust use of force, for all parties to comply with their obligations. The use of force is closely calibrated with political action at the highest level. Peace enforcement is a political strategy with military means playing a supportive role, involving deterrence and coercion as necessary. The Security Council may authorize use of force under Article 42 in Chapter VII of the UN Charter only when peaceful measures would be inadequate to maintain or restore international peace and security. Pure UN peace enforcement missions have been infrequent and usually not deployed until a peace agreement or other agreement is in place. Military force has been authorized by the Council for these operations including to enforce sanctions, defend UN staff and premises, protect civilians in conflict zones, ensure safety for humanitarian relief and to intervene in internal conflicts.
In determining whether peace enforcement is a good option in specific situations where force may be used, the crucial issue is the possibility to uphold impartiality. The compatibility of the actions of the UN mission with its mandate and the UN Charter is momentous, as the use of sanctions or force necessarily entails an imposition of power on the parties. Whether the public opinion or the local population disagrees with enforcing actions is in this respect irrelevant.
Although desirable, peace enforcement unlike peacekeeping does not require consent of the parties of the conflict. In addition, military enforcement logically renders the parties’ consent elusive. Robust force should only be used when alternative methods have proved to be insufficient. This criterion is however not applied as strict as in other peace operations where use of force only is permitted as a last resort. Peace enforcement may consequently require traditional concepts and principles to be adjusted, including less importance to be given to consent from all warring factions, a rethinking of the impartiality notion and a more flexible approach to the use of force.
Humanitarian Intervention
Humanitarian interventions are interventions that aim to alleviate large-scale humanitarian suffering caused by starvation, refugee flows and persecution. Grave violations of human rights also constitute humanitarian concerns that may trigger sanctions. Examples of such violations are ethnic cleansing, forced labour, executions, rape and illegal detentions. To help populations in distress, the Security Council has sanctioned violations of human rights and humanitarian law under Chapter VII. Enforcement measures have been used by peace operations with the aim to ensure humanitarian relief, establish safe havens and uphold law and order. Non-military measures including economic sanctions such as weapon embargoes have also been used, alone or combined with enforcement measures.
Two concepts of humanitarian intervention can be identified: Humanitarian intervention, which implies the use of force, and humanitarian assistance, where non-forceful measures are used. The principle of minimum use of force determines whether force is to be used in humanitarian interventions. In this thesis, humanitarian intervention is further discussed in connection to the debate whether there is a moral implication for the UN to intervene in conflict situations.
Complex Missions
At present, a variety of peace operations of older and newer construction coexist. Traditional peacekeeping missions share the scene with humanitarian interventions, peacemaking, peace building missions and state building missions. Nearly all operations after 1988 comprise state building and/or peace building properties and the majority of them also include human rights components. As world politics changes and global aspects are necessary to take into account, peace operations increasingly contain mixed elements of all the above-mentioned types of operations. This results in UN missions becoming more and more complex. An example of a present mission that encompasses all types of peace operations is MONUC in the DRC.
Concepts
In doctrine, consensus on the purpose of UN peace operations does not exist in the twenty-first century. This has led to an inconsistent use of the different concepts of peacekeeping, which causes confusion. The lack of a clear purpose of peace operations inhibits academics and other writers to fully describe the rationale of actions and the changing role of the UN in global politics in this regard.
A study of peacekeeping activities to explain their development and rationale is problematic due to their political nature. This method would be even less useful for complex missions, where elements of peacekeeping and peace building are combined. As the purpose of peace operations may vary depending not only at which time but also by whom the considerations are made, it is difficult to make an overall survey. An evolutionary approach to peace operations would not serve the purpose of this thesis, as linear theory of peace operations does not clarify why traditional peacekeeping has not become obsolete but, on the contrary, still possesses a high demand. Further, a linear approach is not always applicable to current peace operations. An example of this is the UN operation in the DRC. The UN first came to the country in the 1960’s and continues to face the same challenges today as it did then. Consequently, it is held that changes in world politics have made peace enforcement and other kinds of peace operations a complement to peacekeeping, more frequently employed today than during the Cold War.
The role of UN peace operations cannot be understood in isolation or by simply cataloguing their most common characteristics. Different regions and states have individual needs and each conflict has unique preconditions. The next chapter clarifies the academic debate and puts theory and practice of UN peace operations in its context.
The UN Role
A dynamic debate on potential roles for UN peace operations has emerged on the international arena. The UN’s role in ensuring international peace and security can be seen as a function of how its members understand the international order. Two main approaches have evolved in the discourse regarding which role the UN ought to play in international peace and security: the pluralist and the solidarist approach. The differing views of pluralists and solidarists on how, why and when the UN can, and ought to, interfere with state sovereignty is discussed below.
According to pluralists, who are considered to be conservative, preservation of the principle of traditional peacekeeping and non-intervention in domestic affairs of sovereign states is of highest importance. They believe that the central rules of non-intervention and prohibition of use of force remain the principles that are most likely to lead to stability in the international society, which would enable states to nourish different communities and conceptions of justice. Converging security interests among states are according to pluralists possible when a power balance exist between state actors. Despite the fact that states are the principal bearers of rights and duties in international law, pluralists are sceptical about the idea that states would be able to make agreements beyond the minimum ethic of coexistence. Pluralists also question the desirability of such agreements.
Contrary to the pluralist view, solidarists, who are regarded as liberal and humanitarian, see a more proactive peace enforcer in the UN and argue for its role to be peace and state building. Solidarists strive to strengthen the international society’s legitimacy by making its commitment to justice more profound. Their aim is to reconcile tensions between order and justice claims. Solidarists recognize that individuals have rights and duties in international law but are of the opinion that these only can be enforced by states. According to this view, it is argued that the principle of non- intervention restricts the potential to globally promote human rights. If interventions are not tolerated, states may interpret this as an unlimited freedom to exercise control over its population. International law, such as the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and the 1948 Genocide Convention, is regarded by solidarists to substantially limit sovereign state authority by establishing an obligation for states to ensure protection of human rights.
The achievement of the solidarist approach is confined by the weakness of enforcement mechanisms. The gap between normative commitments and practical political instruments threaten the realization of this view. Many solidarists advocate that use of force may be the only way to ensure humanitarian rights and stop virtual impunity of human rights abuses by governments. Use of force in peace operations represents the kernel of the dilemma for promoters of military intervention as a mean to reach humanitarian goals.
In a world where global perspectives increasingly prevail, issues like development, conflict management, democracy, migration, trade and natural resources affect not only the concerned country or region but have global effects. When the effects of an economy of a specific country or region accordingly are stretched over its borders, these issues are of common concern for all countries in the entire world. The principle of sovereignty is fundamental in the world’s legal systems and without this principle democracy and economic growth would not have reached current levels. But when a state is unable or unwilling to cope with the problems it is facing, and it is evident that the effects thereof would reach beyond its borders, the international society has an interest to interfere. Such interest is both to ensure protection of the threatened civilians but also to limit the spillover effect to other countries. Apart from the negative impact conflicts have on global economy, the humanitarian aspects are often catastrophic due to the fact that the most vulnerable in society are harmed the most in such events. When a state does not resume its state responsibility to protect its civilian population, the international society has the possibility to interfere in order to avoid that innocent citizens are victimized.
Considerable opposition to interventions was noted during the Cold War, especially to interventions in intrastate conflicts. This opposition was particularly strong among countries in the Third World. The historical first time for the UN to intervene in an internal crisis was 1960 in the DRC. The immediate post-Cold War period was optimistic and exceptions to the principle of non-intervention in domestic affairs of sovereign states have since been tolerated to avoid atrocities against civilians. With the fall of the Soviet Union, the Security Council became more active as it was no longer paralysed by the struggle between the super powers. The Council showed a greater willingness to establish peacekeeping missions, which became more complex with larger operations and broader mandates.
Interventions in contemporary internal conflicts increase the tension between sovereignty and protection of human rights and blur the distinction between domestic and international affairs. In most cases, the UN intervenes in a state’s internal crisis with the consent of both sides of the conflict and respects in this manner the UN Charter’s provision of state sovereignty.
Recent developments with an increased rate of UN interventions in civil conflicts may however shift the traditional logic of “rights of states” to “rights of human beings”. Former Secretary-General Boutros Boutros- Ghali stated already in 1992 that the time of absolute and exclusive sovereignty had passed”. Further, the UN High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change argue that sovereignty is conditional to the extent of which states provide and protect human rights. In case they fail to do this, the Panel stresses that there is a clear international obligation to assist states in developing their capacity to perform sovereign functions effectively and responsibly.
There is currently no worldwide consensus on whether prevention and resolution of intrastate conflicts fall within the competence of the UN Of the member states, China, India and the developing countries continue to protest such interventions. The disagreements often depend on the increased complexity of conflict dynamics in contemporary internal crises.
Peacekeeping or peace enforcement
The practice of robust peacekeeping can be described as a ‘product of specific conditions and personalities rather than a deliberate expansion of UN strategy’ and because of that it misses consistency in the ‘understanding and application of force’. It is developed to satisfy the desire, expressed both in the Brahimi report and Capstone doctrine, that peacekeepers must be able to ‘defend themselves, other mission components and the mission’s mandate, with robust rules of engagement, against those who renege on their commitments to a peace accord or otherwise seek to undermine it by violence’. To do so UN operations had to become more robust in order to provide the UN forces with the right tools to implement their mandate. Entering this grey area, it is emphasized that robust peacekeeping is different from peace enforcement. To cite retired Lieutenant- General Babacar Gaye: “it may look like war but it’s peacekeeping”. The difference between peacekeeping and peace enforcement is found in respecting the basic principles for UN peacekeeping, and especially in the use of military force. Where for robust peacekeeping the use of force in defence of the mandate is sort of considered an expansion of the use of force for self-defence, peace enforcement goes well beyond the use of force for self-defence. Robust peacekeeping as defined in the Concept Note on Robust Peacekeeping aims to “deter and confront, when necessary through the use of force, any obstruction to the implementation of its mandate”. It does not, as is at the core of peace enforcement, seek to ‘neutralise’, or in other words, destroy any party to the conflict. So, in concept there is a clear line drawn between peacekeeping and peace enforcement based on whether the use of force is applied for defensive or offensive purposes. In this respect robust peacekeeping seems to fit in the frames of peacekeeping, but does it also qualify as peacekeeping when it comes to respecting the basic principles for UN peacekeeping? And should it?
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