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The massive expansion of multilateral peace missions in 2006, and unforeseen political and strategic developments in mid-year, prompted the United Nations and other multilateral security organizations to address some recurring political and operational dilemmas in peacekeeping and to re-evaluate the role of peacekeeping as a strategic tool in the resolution of contemporary conflicts. The conflict in Lebanon and the mounting violence in Afghanistan necessitated major expansions of the long-established UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) and the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan. Both the UN and NATO -- which in 2006 took over nationwide command of ISAF -- struggled to realize these expansions as contributing countries hesitated and imposed restrictive conditions on the deployment of their troops. One important innovation related to the expansion of UNIFIL was the creation of a special Strategic Military Cell at the UN to take strategic military command of the mission. This cell liaises directly with the UNIFIL Force Commander and reports directly to the UN Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations. Strategic command of UN peace missions has always previously been the responsibility of the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations. In Timor-Leste, a breakdown of order necessitated deployment of a large, multidimensional mission, the UN Integrated Mission in Timor-Leste (UNMIT), just as the UN was intending to withdraw entirely from the country. This sparked new debate about the shortcomings of past international peacebuilding efforts. The apparent failure in Timor-Leste also demonstrated the crucial importance of local ownership in peacebuilding. Long-standing core principles of peacekeeping, such as consent, impartiality and neutrality, came to the fore in policy discussions and were severely tested in their practical implementation in 2006. After the signing of the Darfur Peace Agreement in May, intensive negotiations were needed to obtain the Sudanese Government's consent to the deployment of UN peacekeepers in the Darfur region of Sudan. A joint African Union-UN 'hybrid mission' was eventually accepted. Political resistance to UN engagement in the stalled peace process in Cote d'Ivoire meant that UN and French peacekeepers were obliged to leave the country. Similarly, following a decision by the European Union (EU) to include the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in its list of international terrorist organizations, the LTTE demanded that EU monitors be expelled from the Norwegian -- led Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM), arguing that the mission was no longer either impartial or neutral. While the established principle of the use of force only in self-defence has withstood the test of time, it has undergone considerable reinterpretation in the light of the new range of tasks being given to peace missions and has now come to include defence of the mission's mandate. This comes at a time when peace missions are becoming increasingly robust in nature, as illustrated most starkly and controversially by ISAF. Adapted from the source document.

An unprecedented level of attention was focused on Africa in 2005. Over the past decade the UN has intensified its engagement in Africa and, by December 2005, 75% of UN resources were devoted to Africa. Nearly half the number of deployed UN personnel are African. However, the release in 2005 of major reports from the UN Millennium Project and the British-led Commission for Africa pointed to the stark fact that Africa is currently the region that is farthest from attaining any of the Millennium Development Goals. In recent years, Africa has provided pointed illustrations of the negative impact of weak governance and conflict on economic development -- as in Cote d'Ivoire, Liberia and Zimbabwe -- and of how strong the turnaround can be when governance problems and conflict are resolved -- as in Angola and Mozambique. With recognition of the growing political will in Africa to tackle the inter-connected security and development challenges facing the continent, 2005 saw a renewal of the global commitment to increasing stability and strengthening the continent's own capacity to address peace and security challenges. One of the first tangible achievements of the September 2005 World Summit was the establishment of the UN Peacebuilding Commission. This momentous measure was designed to assist countries emerging from conflict and to ensure that "post-conflict" does not mean "post-engagement" of the international community'. The Commission will improve coordination among all actors within and outside the UN system involved in the post-conflict peace-building process, while at the same time promoting the need to anchor peace-building efforts in local contexts and dynamics, and therefore recognizing the primacy of local stakeholders. The Human Security Report 2005 showed a strong correlation between the sharp decline in armed conflicts and the deployment of peace missions. In 2005 there were mixed results in peacekeeping and peace-building efforts in Africa. In Liberia, the UN mission achieved some success in implementing the transitional priorities, while the UN mission in Sierra Leone marked a successful completion of its six-year mandate, firmly putting the country on the road to a sustainable peace. However, success was not recorded elsewhere in the continent, where peace missions demonstrated the austere realities of peace-building in Africa in 2005 and the problems that will continue to challenge international actors in 2006. Repeated threats of violence in Cote d'Ivoire severely hampered the UN mission from carrying out its mandated tasks. The UN also struggled to bring stability in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and in 2006 requested the support of the EU to deploy a limited military operation to assist in providing a secure environment for the forthcoming elections. The biggest failure of the international community was in Darfur, Sudan. Constrained by the lack of appropriate and necessary equipment, trained and skilled peacekeeping personnel, and financial resources, the African Union (AU) proved woefully inadequate to assume responsibility for tackling Africa's crises. The subsequent decision to merge the AU mission into a UN-led mission was testimony to the AU's embryonic capacity to launch complex peace operations in a sustainable manner. It provides a strong argument for the international community to give serious consideration to the recommendations of the UN High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change that the UN should provide equipment for regional operations and that such operations, when appropriate, should be financed from the UN peacekeeping budget. Adapted from the source document.

The nexus between justice and peace has grown stronger in recent years. Prompted by the experiences in Argentina, the Western Balkans, Rwanda and South Africa, discussions have focused on the necessity of holding accountable those responsible for committing atrocities and grave crimes during armed conflicts to enable a more sustainable peace-building process. In 2003, several significant developments in formal institution building occurred in the sphere of post-conflict justice. The International Criminal Court (ICC), established in July 2002, has moved from a paper court to a fully functioning one. All of the court's key staff -- the judges, the Chief Prosecutor and the Deputy Prosecutor -- were elected and, by the end of the year, they had identified the situations in the Ituri region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda as the first two cases the court would hear. However, the progress of the ICC has been beset by continued opposition, particularly from the United States, which has maintained its policy of pursuing Bilateral Immunity Agreements with states parties to the Rome Statute and non-states parties alike, and implemented the American Service Members' Protection Act. The Rome Statute can be seen to have established a system of international criminal law rather than simply a court. Several states have already begun to incorporate laws against crimes within the ICC's jurisdiction into domestic law. This will further embed the concept of non-impunity. The creation of treaty-based 'hybrid' courts or second-generation courts -- part international and part national -- such as the Special Court for Sierra Leone and the Extraordinary Chambers for Cambodia were important developments in 2003. They underline the international community's acknowledgement that a partnership with domestic actors from the outset is essential to the peace-building process. However, the existence of the hybrid courts and the domestic Iraqi Special Tribunal brought to the fore the question of burden-sharing in the delivery of justice after conflict. The cases of Iraq and, to a lesser extent, Afghanistan illustrate that the international community is still divided as to which of the current models in place is the most appropriate. These examples also raise the question of who decides which model to apply where, and why. Immediately after the US-led intervention in Iraq in 2003, members of the international community acknowledged that the atrocities committed during Saddam Hussein's regime should be dealt with, but could not agree on a suitable mechanism for legal redress. Various models were considered, ranging from a military tribunal to a hybrid court. In the end, a domestic tribunal with little international participation was chosen-largely because the main occupying power has an aversion to international courts. The establishment of the Iraqi Special Tribunal could arguably be seen as a reversion to a system based on victors' justice, which the international community has previously been anxious to move away from. The financial viability of post-conflict justice is still to be addressed. The international community, particularly a select group of states, has spent over $1 billion on international courts. With so many international courts now in place the question of the financial sustainability of maintaining them arises. Nor is further devolution to the local level a solution because, as in the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the costs still fall to the international community. The debate about striking the delicate balance between resource constraints and symbolic justice that ensures optimum and appropriate levels of punishment is one that will continue for some time. Adapted from the source document.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) formally came into being on 1 July 2002 after the required 60th ratification of the Rome Statute was deposited. The states parties were able to quickly proceed with the details of the court's operationalization -- a budget for court & a process for nominating judges. However, the establishment of the ICC continued to be controversial, with many states opposed to its creation & the US one of its strongest opponents. In 2002. ICC was made a political pawn between its proponents & opponents & the US took various steps to dilute the effectiveness of the court & shield its citizens from the court's jurisdiction. 1 Table. Adapted from the source document.

The year saw the closing of six long-standing missions & the initiation of four new ones, which brought the total number of multilateral peace missions conducted in 2002 to 48. The trend towards smaller, short-term, & mandate-specific peace missions continued in 2002. This was highlighted in the Balkans & in Timor-Leste where the increasingly stable political & security situations allowed for a significant reduction of the international presence. In 2002, prompted by developments in its security & defense policies, the European Union began preparing for a scheduled 2003 takeover of the UN Mission in Bosnia & Herzegovina & Task Force Harvest. Another significant development was the emphasis of political & peace-building operations, illustrated by the launch of the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan & the UN Mission in Angola. 1 Table. Adapted from the source document.

The year 2011 was in many respects a year of contradiction for peacekeeping. On the one hand, after nearly a decade of record expansion in the numbers of operations and personnel deployed and the costs of financing these operations, peacekeeping showed initial signs of slowing down in 2010 and there were further indications in 2011 that military-heavy, multidimensional peace operations have reached a plateau. On the other hand, 2011 saw the possible beginnings of an actionable commitment by the international community to the concepts of the responsibility to protect (R2P) and protection of civilians (POC) in relation to the conflicts in Cote d'Ivoire, Libya and Syria. Several factors explain the consolidation trend of recent years. First and foremost is the global military overstretch: during the years of expansion the United Nations and other organizations had difficulty in persuading countries to contribute sufficient troops and force enablers such as helicopters. The emergence of new contributors such as Brazil, China and Indonesia, while a positive development, did not significantly fill the demand gap. A second factor is the ongoing global financial downturn, which had a more discernible impact on peacekeeping in 2011 as governments outlined budget cuts for their militaries and advocated leaner operations and quicker exits in multilateral frameworks such as the UN. Third, over the past decade contemporary peace operations have faced 'mission creep' in terms of the explosion of mandated tasks, which often require civilian expertise and open-ended time frames. This has led to a questioning of whether a heavy (and long-term) military footprint in peace operations is necessary. Adapted from the source document.

Civilian personnel play an ever more central role in multidimensional and integrated peacekeeping and peacebuilding operations, which often integrate political, humanitarian, development and military activities to assist the host country's transition from conflict to sustainable peace. As mission mandates have grown increasingly complex, the requirement for qualified civilian expertise has grown apace. The number of civilian tasks mandated in United Nations Security Council resolutions for UN peace operations and the number of civilian missions undertaken by regional organizations have increased dramatically in the past five years. These increases are coupled with a near doubling of the number of civilians assigned to global multilateral peace operations: they currently exceed 6500. On the 10th anniversary of the seminal Brahimi report, which highlighted for the first time the centrality of the civilian contribution to the effectiveness of UN peace operations and called for a strengthened UN capacity in this area, 2009 was marked by sustained attention to the civilian dimension. Although that dimension has been strengthened by a range of recent institutional innovations (both at the multilateral and national level) to overcome the deployment challenges that have plagued past missions, these nascent structures are still neither appropriately configured nor provided with adequate resources. More critically, there is a lack of a common understanding of the civilian role -- who are the civilian experts and what is their role? In addition, these institutional fixes may not translate into concrete or workable solutions in the field. The UN Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) illustrates the operational challenges in filling and sustaining the civilian component of peace operations and how the lack of conceptual clarity can affect the mission's overall efficacy. Enhancing the civilian dimension is thus a broader agenda and goes beyond expeditiously deploying the right experts in the numbers necessary. It requires revisiting the broader architecture and examining the linkages between interrelated factors, such as financing peace operations and recruitment. It also necessitates critical analysis of the purpose and objectives of each civilian function in order to avoid duplication of tasks within the mission. Adapted from the source document.

Enthält: Wiharta, Sharon: The legitimacy of peace operations. - S. 95-116 Soder, Kirsten: Multilateral peace operations, 2008. - S. 117-158 Foxley, Tim: Security and politics in Afghanistan: progress, problems and prospects. - S. 159-178

At the end of 2004 over 64,000 military and civilian police personnel and 4,000 civilian personnel were deployed in 21 UN missions, arguably putting the UN in danger of overstretching its institutional capacities. At the same time 35 peace missions, with a total of 225 385 military and civilian personnel, were carried out by regional organizations and UN-sanctioned non-standing coalitions of states. It is against this backdrop that the report of the UN High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change addressed UN peace operations, in particular the challenge of post-conflict peace-building, and proposed the establishment of a Peace-building Commission, which UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan endorsed in his own report, 'In Larger Freedom: Towards Development, Security and Human Rights for All', in March 2005. Peace-building is an increasingly central component of multilateral peace missions, as reflected in the fact that the mandates of 17 of the UN missions launched since 1999 include peace-building tasks. Peace-building is a process involving external actors enabling a post-conflict society to function in the political, social and economic spheres. The magnitude of the peace-building task means that priorities have to be set. Over the past few years, a fair degree of consensus has emerged on what these tasks are and the order in which they should be carried out. However, current peace-building endeavors under way in Afghanistan, Cote d'Ivoire, Haiti, Iraq and Liberia demonstrate that the challenges of magnitude and legitimacy (both international and local) intersect to make the practical tasks of peace-building difficult to address. Re-establishing the state's ability to provide security -- or 'renationalizing' the use of force and the prevention of violence within society -- is the first priority. Afghanistan is a vivid example of the complexities involved: the lack of progress with demobilization, disarmament and reintegration there contributed to the deterioration of the security situation throughout the country. The second priority area is the establishment of functioning law and order within the society. Without the necessary legal and administrative structures and mechanisms in place, economic reconstruction and social rehabilitation cannot take place. In Liberia, the need to set up a temporary skeletal legal system before embarking on a substantive overhaul of the rule of law highlights the challenge of balancing short-term versus long-term goals. The third and fourth priority areas for peace-building-economic reconstruction and governance and participation -- are considerably more difficult to prioritize. Perfect sequencing of peace-building tasks, however, does not necessarily guarantee sustainability. What is needed but often neglected is local participation in the process. A cursory glance at the scope of the tasks and responsibilities of contemporary peace operations raises the question of how the UN and regional organizations can continue to effectively oversee multiple peace operations of a multi-dimensional nature. A variety of responses have been offered. Some have argued that a minimalist approach towards peace-building should be taken and that the role of the international community should be limited to establishing security, leaving the rest to the local population. Others argue that a period of 'benevolent autocracy' from external actors offers the best chance for successful peace-building. Adapted from the source document.

Fourteen multilateral peace missions were launched in 2003 -- the highest number of new missions initiated in a single year since the end of the cold war. The growing demand for peace operations reflects the trend of a steady decline in the number of major armed conflicts since 1998, but also serves to highlight the fragility of peace processes as demonstrated in Burundi, Cote d'Ivoire and Liberia. The increasing prevalence of regional organizations and multinational coalitions in multilateral peace missions and the diversity of their engagement were again evident. Regional actors accounted for 11 of the 14 new peace operations established in 2003. The scope of their involvement, particularly their linkages with the UN, ranged from serving as short-term holding mechanisms; operations that follow on from UN operations; participation in a multi-dimensional UN operation; and complementary deployment to operations that receive UN endorsement but are outside of UN command and control. The complex issues of legitimacy, transparency and coordination between the UN and regional organizations pose central and challenging questions to be addressed in 2004 by the UN High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change. One of the most striking developments in the context of regional organizations was the initiation of out-of-area operations by the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Afghanistan, respectively. Events in 2003 revitalized the discussion of African regional peacekeeping capabilities. Although the African Union, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the Communaute Economique et Monetaire d'Afrique Centrale (CEMAC) conducted four new missions, in Burundi, Cote d'Ivoire, Liberia and the Central African Republic -- these were relatively small and time-limited operations. They demonstrate that African organizations continue to grapple with resource constraints (both manpower and financial) and suggest that increased political will by African organizations to develop their institutional capacities in crisis management should be matched by international support. Increasing attacks against UN peacekeepers and humanitarian aid workers in Iraq, Afghanistan, the DRC and elsewhere in 2003 brought the issues of the security of personnel in peace operations and the complex relationship between military intervention forces and humanitarian aid actors to the fore. This has reignited a debate within the humanitarian and development communities on the merits and desirability of close links between them and military and peacekeeping actors. Adapted from the source document.

Four of the major armed conflicts ongoing in 2002 -- Chechnya, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, & Israel-Palestinians -- intensified substantially. They also underlined the continuous evolution in the methods of war fighting. The conflicts in Sri Lanka, Somalia, & Sudan, each of which came close to achieving a negotiated settlement, highlighted that external influences, such as diplomatic pressure or promises of military, foreign, & humanitarian aid, can play a major role in changing the dynamics of an intra-state conflict. There is also evidence that the effects of the US war on terrorism had a direct impact on most of the eight conflicts surveyed. Adapted from the source document.

There can be no doubt about the dominance of conflict as a concern in modern security analysis and policy. Localized and active conflicts have attracted proportionately much greater attention since the ending of the East-West Cold War and, with it, of the essentially static military confrontation in Europe that had carried the potential for global annihilation. They produce more shock and shame, as well as concern, in the onlooker because they appear as exceptions to the trend of stabilization in inter-state and inter-regional relations since 1990 and as a reversion to "pre-modern" methods of behaving in the global society. They carry more complicated material implications for non-combatant states because of the generally increasing interdependence and "globalization" of the world economy.

Enthält: Wiharta, Sharon; Blair, Stephanie: Civilian roles in peace operations. - S. [87]-106 Soder, Kirsten; Karlsson, Krister: Multilateral peace operations, 2009. - S. [107]-147