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Conference proceedings: research results and approaches of advocacy to unarmed civilian protection / peacekeeping

Since 1999, in the aftermath of the tragic failures in Rwanda and
Srebrenica, the UN Security Council (UNSC) has readily and consistently
entrusted UN peacekeeping operations (UNPKOs) with robust mandates and the
authority to use force beyond self-defense for the protection of civilians.
In the ensuing decades, it has also sought to provide more robust resources
including vehicles, weapons, equipment, and technologies to enable UNPKOs to
implement and fulfill their mandates. What is only now being addressed,
however, is the need for more robust performance. This presentation
describes the mindset, understanding, and attitudes that are required to
achieve an effective level of performance.

pt. I. The role and the rule of law in international peacekeeping -- pt. II. The constitutional basis of peacekeeping -- pt. III. Principles of international peacekeeping -- pt. IV. Law applicable to peacekeeping operations -- pt. V. International administrations.

Examines the privatization of peacekeeping. The spotty record of the UN in this role are briefly addressed before looking at the role of private companies in peace operations, particularly in Africa. The private sector is less expensive, more flexible, & more efficient, making the outsourcing of peace operations sensible to governments. Issues of accountability & regulation of these private companies are touched on. it is concluded that the limitations of international peacekeeping point to the utility of privatizing those services. J. Zendejas

Abstract
How does the experience of peacekeeping shape the countries that contribute troops and the troops themselves, individually and collectively? Most of the peacekeeping literature's focus has traditionally been on field missions, the countries that host them and the challenges of attracting sufficient and appropriately trained troops. We suggest that more emphasis should be put not only on the locations where missions deploy, but also on the individuals, countries and institutions that make up the missions. To analytically capture this more comprehensive understanding of what peacekeeping is—its multiple effects across space—we suggest drawing on the concept of assemblages to make an analytical shift from peacekeeping missions to global peacekeeping assemblages. First, this approach abandons the prior analytical separation of field mission, host country and contributing state/organization as discrete or isolated analytical focus points. Second, it encourages a detailed empirical methodology that focuses on how multiplicities of different actors, knowledges, technologies, norms and values through power struggles and negotiations constitute assemblages in geographically dispersed locations. Third, we suggest treating peacekeeping as flexible social facts, as outcomes of the co-functioning of heterogenous actors with diverse motivations and objectives that cannot be traced back to a single, but rather multiple point(s) of origin(s).

This article traces the history of Australian peacekeeping since its beginnings in September 1947. It shows that, while there have always been Australian peacekeepers in the field since 1947, the level of commitment in different periods has varied greatly. The article sets out to explain this phenomenon, chiefly in political terms. It argues that Australia's early involvement in the invention of peacekeeping owed much to External Affairs Minister H.V. Evatt's interest in multilateralism, but that under the subsequent conservative Menzies government a new focus on alliance politics produced mixed results in terms of peacekeeping commitments. By contrast, in the 1970s and early 1980s, for different reasons Prime Ministers Whitlam and Fraser pursued policies which raised Australia's peacekeeping profile. After a lull in the early years of the Hawke Labor government, the arrival of internationalist Gareth Evans as Foreign Minister signalled a period of intense peacekeeping activity by Australia. For different, regionally-focused reasons, Australia was again active in peacekeeping in the late 1990s and early 2000s. In recent years, however, Australia's heavy commitment to Middle East wars has reduced its peacekeeping contribution once again to a low level.

United Nations peacekeeping has proven remarkably effective at reducing the death and destruction of civil wars. But how peacekeepers achieve their ends remains under-explored. This book presents a typological theory of how peacekeepers exercise power. If power is the ability of A to get B to behave differently, peacekeepers convince the peacekept to stop fighting in three basic ways: they persuade verbally, induce financially, and coerce through deterrence, surveillance and arrest. Based on more than two decades of study, interviews with peacekeepers, unpublished records on Namibia, and ethnographic observation of peacekeepers in Lebanon, DR Congo, and the Central African Republic, this book explains how peacekeepers achieve their goals, and differentiates peacekeeping from its less effective cousin, counterinsurgency. It recommends a new international division of labor, whereby actual military forces hone their effective use of compulsion, while UN peacekeepers build on their strengths of persuasion, inducement, and coercion short of offensive force.