Suchergebnisse

The widespread practice of intervention by outside actors aimed at building sustainable peace within societies ravaged by war has been a striking feature of the post-Cold War era. But, at a time when more peacekeepers are deployed around the world than at any other point in history, is the international will to intervene beginning to wane? And how capable are the systems that exist for planning and deploying peacebuilding missions of fulfilling the increasingly complex tasks set for them? In Building Peace After War, Mats Berdal addresses these and other crucial questions, examining the record of interventions from Cambodia in the early 1990s to contemporary efforts in Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The book analyses the nature of the modern peacebuilding environment, in particular the historical and psychological conditions that shape it, and addresses the key tasks faced by outside forces in the early and critical post-conflict phase of an intervention. In doing so, it asks searching questions about the role of military force in support of peacebuilding, and the vital importance of legitimacy to any intervention. Berdal also looks critically at the ways in which governments and international organisations, particularly the UN, have responded to these many challenges. He highlights the pivotal role of politics in planning peacebuilding operations, and offers some sober reflections on the future prospects for post-conflict intervention.

The chapter examines the afterlife of peace agreements aimed at ending civil wars in thepost-Cold War era. Assessing the 'success' or otherwise of these agreements is not possiblewithout an appreciation of the context – historical, political, cultural and normative – withinwhich they have been negotiated, concluded and implemented. While context is thus allimportant, the history and fate of peace accords have also been shaped by the content ofindividual agreements, as well as by the manner of their implementation. The record showst hat poorly designed and inadequately supported peace agreements can entrench pre-war patterns of conflict, exacerbate intra-elite competition, and accentuate socio-economic and political grievances within war-torn societies. By contrast, agreements that are properly designed, adequately resourced, and underpinned by constructive political support from parties, regional actors and international sponsors, can strengthen the political forces and dynamics favoring long-term stability and societal transformation towards self-sustaining peace. Peace agreements after civil wars are often best approached as living documents whose flexible and politically informed interpretation can help parties and mediators chart political avenues out of protracted violence.

Efforts to "operationalize" the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) continue to encounter resistance from key member states. Where it matters most, among vulnerable civilian populations caught up in war, the R2P appears to be making scant difference.Rising geopolitical tensions have added to a growing sense of pessimism among R2P advocates. Unsurprisingly, the most contentions aspect of the R2P concept continues to revolve around the question of the use of force for humanitarian purposes. It is a subject on which states, for an admixture of historical and political reasons, remain deeply divided. Nonetheless, as a politically significant norm, the R2P has come to command growing support from states, even though the degree to which the R2P norm has been truly internalized across international society varies greatly

The article considers the state of UN peacekeeping through the prism of its long-running operation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Focusing in particular on the challenges raised by use of force and the protection of civilians in conditions of ongoing armed conflict, it argues that UN field operations must be aligned much more closely than they have been over the past 15 years to political and diplomatic efforts aimed at securing viable political settlements to internal conflict. The issues raised by the history of the UN's troubled mission in the DRC are deeply relevant to the wider discussion of the organisation's role in the field of peace and security.

The chapter traces the thinking and the practices surrounding the use of force by UN peacekeepers from the conceptual foundations laid in the era of classical peacekeeping to the contemporary focus on the protection of civilians and more "robust" operations. At the tactical level, a properly equipped and properly commanded force has on occasion been used with decisive effect in response to immediate crises or emergencies. The larger and more critical strategic lesson from the history of robust peacekeeping since 1999, however, is a cautionary one; one that highlights the need for the activities of UN "blue helmets" to be much more closely aligned than they have become over the past decade and a half to the search for viable political solutions to conflict.