Self-Defence, Protection of Humanitarian Values, and the Doctrine of Impartiality and Neutrality in Enforcement Mandates

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Tsagourias
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
Responsibility To Protect ◽  
Peacekeeping Operations ◽  
United Nations Peacekeeping ◽  
Humanitarian Values ◽  
Peacekeeping Missions ◽  
Self Defence

This chapter begins by examining the scope of the principles of consent, neutrality/impartiality, and minimum use of force as they apply to modern United Nations peacekeeping operations. It then asks how the use of force can be used to protect humanitarian values assigned to peacekeeping operations, and how such use of force interacts with the principles of neutrality and of impartiality. The chapter also discusses the implications of ‘the responsibility to protect’ and the ‘protection of civilians’ for the competence to use force. The chapter concludes by identifying a number of difficulties encounted by peacekeeping missions in attaining humanitarian values.

scholarly journals Implementation in practice: The use of force to protect civilians in United Nations peacekeeping

2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 458-485 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ingvild Bode ◽  
John Karlsrud
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
International Relations ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
Member States ◽  
Peacekeeping Operations ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
United Nations Peacekeeping ◽  
Normative Foundations

Since the failures of the United Nations of the early 1990s, the protection of civilians has evolved as a new norm for United Nations peacekeeping operations. However, a 2014 United Nations report found that while peacekeeping mandates often include the use of force to protect civilians, this has routinely been avoided by member states. What can account for this gap between the apparently solid normative foundations of the protection of civilians and the wide variation in implementation? This article approaches the question by highlighting normative ambiguity as a fundamental feature of international norms. Thereby, we consider implementation as a political, dynamic process where the diverging understandings that member states hold with regard to the protection of civilians norm manifest and emerge. We visualize this process in combining a critical-constructivist approach to norms with practice theories. Focusing on the practices of member states’ military advisers at the United Nations headquarters in New York, and their positions on how the protection of civilians should be implemented on the ground, we draw attention to their agency in norm implementation at an international site. Military advisers provide links between national ministries and contingents in the field, while also competing for being recognized as competent performers of appropriate implementation practices. Drawing on an interpretivist analysis of data generated through an online survey, a half-day workshop and interviews with selected delegations, the article adds to the understanding of norms in international relations while also providing empirical insights into peacekeeping effectiveness.

South Sudan

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison Giffen
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
United Nations ◽  
South Sudan ◽  
Secretary General ◽  
Responsibility To Protect ◽  
Political Crisis ◽  
Peacekeeping Operations ◽  
United Nations Peacekeeping ◽  
The Government ◽  
Do So

Two years and five months following the country’s independence from Sudan, a political crisis in South Sudan quickly devolved into a civil war marked by violence that could amount to atrocities. At the time, a United Nations peacekeeping operation, UNMISS, was the principal multinational intervention in South Sudan. UNMISS was explicitly mandated to assist the government of South Sudan to fulfil its responsibility to protect and was also authorized to protect civilians when the government was unable or unwilling to do so. Despite this role, UNMISS’s Special Representative of the Secretary-General said that no one could have predicted the scale or speed at which the violence unfolded. This chapter explores whether the atrocities could have been predicted by UNMISS, why UNMISS was unprepared, and what other peacekeeping operations can learn from UNMISS’s experience.

scholarly journals A Blurring of Roles: Use of Force in UN Peacekeeping

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria do Ceu Pinto Arena
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
The Other ◽  
Peace Operations ◽  
Peacekeeping Operations ◽  
Hybrid Nature ◽  
Un Peacekeeping ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Self Defence ◽  
Emerging Pattern

There is a sober paradox involved in the use of oxymoron ‘peace operations’, as these operations, traditionallyanchored on the bedrock principles of UN peacekeeping - consent of the parties, impartiality, and non-use of force exceptin self-defence -, are being increasingly transformed into enforcement operations. Twenty-seven years after the end of theCold War and the rebirth of the United Nations’ (UN) security role, peacekeeping operations are increasingly losing groundto an emerging pattern of more aggressive, offensive operations. They have an essentially hybrid nature, involving elementsof both peacekeeping and enforcement. Although many see them as alternative, non-reconcilable techniques, politicians andpractitioners do not see a sharp dividing line separating non-coercive and enforcement tasks, permitting an easy transitionfrom one to the other.

scholarly journals United Nations Peacekeeping Operations in the era of COVID-19

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 17
Author(s):  
Amanda M. Makosso
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Physical Violence ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Press Releases ◽  
Peacekeeping Operations ◽  
Sustainable Peace ◽  
United Nations Peacekeeping ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Peacekeeping Missions ◽  
Violent Conflicts

With its seven peacekeeping operations deployed in the African continent, the United Nations peacekeeping seeks to maintain peace and security by helping African states create conditions for sustainable peace. As COVID-19 has exposed the international system’s vulnerability, this analysis seeks to explore what Peacekeeping looks like in the COVID-19 era. By drawing on news articles, reports, and United Nations press releases, this account also examines the challenges faced by peacekeepers in Sub Saharan Africa, a region well known for violent conflicts and warfare. It is interesting to note that peacekeeping in the COVID 19 era appears to have struck a balance between protecting people's health, ensuring civilians protection from threats of physical violence, and taking gender dynamics into account. However, operational changes in peacekeeping missions resulting from COVID-19 seem to have a serious effect on missions and troops and might raise severe implications for the future of peacekeeping in Africa. APA Citation Makosso, A. M. (2020). United Nations peacekeeping operations in the era of COVID-19. The Journal of Intelligence, Conflict, and Warfare, 3(2), 1-17. https://journals.lib.sfu.ca/index.php/jicw/article/view/2378/1812

Ethos of ‘Vasudhiva Kutumbakam’ in Nepal’s Contribution to UN Peacekeeping Operations

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-150
Author(s):  
Gaurav Bhattarai ◽  
Beenita Nepali
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
United Nations ◽  
World Peace ◽  
Policy Objective ◽  
Peacekeeping Operations ◽  
Un Peacekeeping ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
United Nations Peacekeeping ◽  
Global Peace ◽  
Peacekeeping Missions

After joining the United Nations in 1955, Nepal not only initiated its non-isolationist foreign policy, but also effectively championed the policy of non-alignment, world peace and non-intervention at several multilateral forums and UN bodies. The most outstanding and globally applauded effort has been Nepal’s contribution in the maintenance of global peace and security through UN peacekeeping missions. Adhering to the eastern philosophy of ‘Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam’, which envisions the entire world as one family, today, Nepal is the 5th largest troop contributor to the United Nations Peacekeeping Operations (UNPKO). But most of the literature produced on Nepal’s role in the United Nations peacekeeping mission are either too general and mere archival or focussed only on glorifying the contribution of Nepali soldiers in different peacekeeping missions. Identifying the same research gap, this study aims to appraise Nepal’s participation in UN peacekeeping missions from Nepal’s foreign policy objective of world peace. To fulfill the same objective, the ethos of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam has been foregrounded in the study. Initially, the general understanding of UN peacekeeping in Nepal was associated with bravery, which was later replaced by the concept of ‘kamaune’, which means to earn from the missions. But this study has deliberately cloaked the economic variable of peacekeeping and foregrounds the philosophical drive to highlight how Nepal’s peacekeeping should find more places in political and foreign policy measurement rather than being confined to the financial and institutional variables.

UN Peacekeeping Operations and Successful Military Diplomacy: A Case Study of Pakistan

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bakare Najimdeen
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Security Council ◽  
United Nations Security Council ◽  
Policy Objective ◽  
Peacekeeping Operations ◽  
Un Peacekeeping ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Peacekeeping Missions ◽  
Military Diplomacy

Few years following its creation, the United Nations (UN) with the blessing of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) decided to establish the UN Peacekeeping Operations (UNPKO), as a multilateral mechanism geared at fulfilling the Chapter VII of the UN Charter which empowered the Security Council to enforce measurement to maintain or restore international peace and security. Since its creation, the multilateral mechanism has recorded several successes and failures to its credit. While it is essentially not like traditional diplomacy, peacekeeping operations have evolved over the years and have emerged as a new form of diplomacy. Besides, theoretically underscoring the differences between diplomacy and foreign policy, which often appear as conflated, the paper demonstrates how diplomacy is an expression of foreign policy. Meanwhile, putting in context the change and transformation in global politics, particularly global conflict, the paper argues that traditional diplomacy has ceased to be the preoccupation and exclusive business of the foreign ministry and career diplomats, it now involves foot soldiers who are not necessarily diplomats but act as diplomats in terms of peacekeeping, negotiating between warring parties, carrying their countries’ emblems and representing the latter in resolving global conflict, and increasingly becoming the representation of their countries’ foreign policy objective, hence peacekeeping military diplomacy. The paper uses decades of Pakistan’s peacekeeping missions as a reference point to establish how a nation’s peacekeeping efforts represent and qualifies as military diplomacy. It also presented the lessons and good practices Pakistan can sell to the rest of the world vis-à-vis peacekeeping and lastly how well Pakistan can consolidate its peacekeeping diplomacy.

Beyond Keeping Peace: United Nations Effectiveness in the Midst of Fighting

2014 ◽  
Vol 108 (4) ◽  
pp. 737-753 ◽  
Author(s):  
LISA HULTMAN ◽  
JACOB KATHMAN ◽  
MEGAN SHANNON
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Violent Conflict ◽  
Empirical Examination ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Un Peacekeeping ◽  
United Nations Peacekeeping ◽  
Peacekeeping Missions ◽  
The Cold War

While United Nations peacekeeping missions were created to keep peace and perform post-conflict activities, since the end of the Cold War peacekeepers are more often deployed to active conflicts. Yet, we know little about their ability to manage ongoing violence. This article provides the first broad empirical examination of UN peacekeeping effectiveness in reducing battlefield violence in civil wars. We analyze how the number of UN peacekeeping personnel deployed influences the amount of battlefield deaths in all civil wars in Africa from 1992 to 2011. The analyses show that increasing numbers of armed military troops are associated with reduced battlefield deaths, while police and observers are not. Considering that the UN is often criticized for ineffectiveness, these results have important implications: if appropriately composed, UN peacekeeping missions reduce violent conflict.

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