Peacebuilding—helping societies make the transition from civil violence to a durable peace—has been the UN’s principal security activity since the end of the Cold War. Although peacebuilding methods have been refined over years of trial and error, it remains an uncertain science, yielding mixed results. Nevertheless, for all its shortcomings, the international peacebuilding ‘project’ remains one of the most remarkable exercises in collective conflict management the world has ever witnessed. This chapter identifies the principal features of the UN’s peacebuilding operations, examines the record of peacebuilding since the end of the Cold War, and describes some of the main issues and controversies surrounding these missions.
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