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This chapter analyzes results from a quantitative study on UN peacekeeping (Doyle and Sambanis) to assess the extent to which UN peacekeeping operations are strategic. Although UN missions are important for achieving self-sustaining or “participatory” peace in the short-term, they fail to positively influence long-term war avoidance. Sambanis argues that the type of UN mission deployed often fails to correspond to the peacebuilding ecology of the conflict. In order for UN operations to become strategic, they must consider the relationship between three key factors in a post-war environment: the depth of hostilities, local capacity for peacebuilding, and resulting requirements for international assistance. Along with these three dimensions—the “peacebuilding triangle”—Sambanis argues that UN interventions must increase their capacity to promote rapid economic growth if they are to achieve sustainable peace.

Several key assumptions about economic liberalization that inform current peacebuilding operations must be reconsidered. Smith argues that there is little evidence supporting the assumptions that market liberalization leads to economic growth, reduces inequality, or creates neoliberal states capable of promoting peace. In fact, inequality is increasing, and many states are increasingly weak and undemocratic. According to Smith, international peace and security cannot be achieved without addressing inequality in the global order. Peacebuilding approaches must consider how peacebuilding operations reproduce power and must be delinked from the neoliberal “globalization project.” Smith offers policy prescriptions for peacebuilders that address the shortcomings of current neoliberal models.

Inherent in the many conceptualizations of strategic peacebuilding is the concept of coordination among multiple actors and roles. Fast grapples with the complex and wide-ranging idea of coordination, exploring the need for third-party coordination in conflict settings and the dilemmas of coordination and integration, which may compromise an organization’s independence, neutrality or security. Engaging both sides of the debate on integrating humanitarian assistance and peacebuilding, Fast argues that it is not the aim or within the scope of humanitarian action to promote social change or build peace; rather, separate space must be preserved for humanitarian action. Humanitarian action should, however, avoid contributing to conflict.

This chapter works out the implications of the principles of complementarity and subsidiarity in the area of peace operations conducted by the UN and regional organizations. The principal peace operations conducted by the UN, ECOWAS, AU, NATO, and EU are examined in their legal framework, and doctrinal controversies surrounding these issues are also addressed. Chapter 7 then proceeds to examine such structural factors as mandate of peace operations, consent by states, command and control, and the use of force. The analysis of notions pertaining to command and control over peace operations, and their practical implications, paves the way for examining the issues of responsibility later in Chapter 8.

The opening chapter starts by presenting the empirical and theoretical motivations. Empirically, it introduces the ‘learning challenge’ in contemporary UN peace operations, in many ways the UN's flagship activity. With sprawling growth and evermore complex mandates, modern peace operations have become an inherently knowledge-based venture, a far cry from the traditional ceasefire monitoring of the early days. Peacekeepers need guidance and doctrine to carry out an expanding set of tasks — some of which, like building judicial systems, are at the frontier of knowledge about social transformations and the complex role of outsiders in such processes. Despite this pressing need, the UN has for a long time failed to invest in the tools and infrastructure for learning lessons and developing guidance and doctrine. When the landmark Report of the Panel on UN Peace Operations (the ‘Brahimi Report’) urged a change of course in 2000, it took an additional three years before the UN began to turn itself into a learning organization. But how exactly does the UN learn in peace operations and what are the factors enabling and hindering learning? The chapter proceeds to introduce the methodology and case selection before outlining the overall structure of the book.

On 1 Nov 1994, the UN Trusteeship Council voted to suspend operations after Palau, the last remaining trust territory, attained independence. The sovereign state has emerged out of decolonization as the supreme form of political organization in post‐colonial international society—an international society in which dominions, colonies, principalities, free cities, and, of course, mandates and trust territories have all but vanished. However, the ostensible failure of this post‐colonial project—the fact that the promise of peace and prosperity held out by independent statehood is too often betrayed by appalling violence and absolute poverty—has reinvigorated interest in trusteeship as a way of responding to problems of international disorder and injustice. The purpose of this chapter is threefold: first, it examines the principal dilemma of decolonization that has resulted in a renewed interest in trusteeship; second, it considers this renewed interest in trusteeship in the context of international involvement in administering Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, and, until recently, East Timor; third, it reflects upon the normative implications that a resurrected practice of trusteeship carries for a society of states that is premised on the juridical equality of all its members. The five sections of the chapter are: The False Promise of post‐Colonial Independence; Innovation and Convention—the case for trusteeship in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, and East Timor; The New International Legitimacy—the resurrection of trusteeship; A Universal Society of States?; and Answering the Call of Humanity.

In the wake of Rwanda and Srebrenica, the Brahimi report recommended that ‘peacekeepers — troops or police — who witness violence against civilians should be presumed to be authorized to stop it, within their means, in support of basic United Nations principles’, but acknowledged practical difficulties in implementing this presumption as a principle. Efforts have been made to improve the protection of civilians in armed conflict both at UN level and through developments in national peacekeeping doctrines, but the extent of peacekeepers' protection obligations remains controversial. This chapter draws on the earlier chapters to assess the protection obligations of peacekeepers in the light of the different contexts in which peacekeepers operate; it discusses the implications of the ‘responsibility to protect’; the implications of the laws of occupation; and the distinctions between the obligations not to abuse; to protect persons in the care of the force; and to protect civilians in the local community from attack. The chapter also highlights the particular problem of sexual violence and the measures taken to deal with it.

This chapter argues that more analysis is needed of peace operations at the local level. It critically reviews the academic literature to demonstrate that, although the domestic governance roles of peace operations are central, prevailing approaches have focused on their international character. By doing so, the literature has to date largely overlooked important characteristics of peace operations that can be expected to influence their outcomes. In the sparse literature that has given more attention to the local level, key limitations remain. Such work takes either a normative approach, which aims to understand local responses to peace operations but not to explain their causal significance, or an instrumental one that focuses only on the ways in which peace operations can alter the incentives of local actors, thus overlooking the means by which operations can influence local interests and beliefs.

This chapter surveys the roles that PMSCs have taken on and the more ambitious possibilities that have been proposed in the area of peacekeeping. There is, at present, little guidance on what functions can be outsourced in the implementation of a UN Security Council mandate. In fact, PMSCs have been engaged in a broad spectrum of activities, including some of the more ancillary aspects constituting peace consolidating measures or post-conflict measures, such as the recruitment and training of troops and the clearing of mines. At the same time, the status of PMSCs under international humanitarian law is murky at best. The situation is compounded by the questions of who ultimately bears responsibility for the company misconduct. Despite these concerns, suggestions have been made for expanded use of PMSCs, such as employing them as UN blue helmets or even as UN-mandated or UN-led troops carrying out military operations.

This chapter outlines the aims, research questions, and methodology of How Peace Operations Work, highlighting the book’s distinctive contributions. Three common assumptions about peace operations are reconsidered: first, that they are primarily international phenomena; second, that their effectiveness is determined overwhelmingly by structural forces; and third, that their effectiveness is ultimately a technical, apolitical issue. The chapter defines the book’s central concepts—power, local legitimacy, cooperation—and explains how these are applied to generate new insights about the effectiveness of peace operations. The chapter introduces the cases of the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) and the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI), and defines the book’s research methodology.

The primary aim of this chapter is to explain the apparent paradox of increasing Chinese support and involvement even as UN peace operations have become more complex, dangerous, and intrusive. The argument explores why Beijing moved from a position of hostility to UN operations in the Maoist era to one of constructive if still cautious engagement. It then establishes how the building of a positive image and reputation through involvement in UN peace operations has proven useful to the more active presentation of its core beliefs about the role of such activity in generating peace and security, before assessing the extent to which its ideas contradict or complement some of the central recommendations offered in the major reports that the UN has commissioned on this topic and that will be referenced in the opening sections of this chapter. A final section concentrates on Beijing’s decision to augment further the UN’s capacity to carry out peace operations, particularly after 2015, before exploring some of the consequences, actual and potential, that have come in the wake of that decision.

In this exploratory article, the authors investigate if and how sport may be used as a tool to advance Peace Support Operations’ (PSO) success. This is done based on a review of existing literature both in the Sport for Development and Peace (SDP) and PSO fields, as well as information on relevant activities going on “in the field” and a first round of interviews with Colombian and German officers. The authors start with an examination of sport as a tool for peace-building and the nexus between sport and the military. Outlining the characteristics and challenges of today’s complex PSO’s, they identify docking points and ways of how sport may be used to mitigate those challenges. The authors focus on four areas: multinational military-military cooperation, international civil-military interaction and PSO’s relations with the local population and the local authorities and armed forces. Acknowledging some restraints due to the nature of these operations’ constellations and dynamics, they propose six preliminary models for the use of sport to support mission success and encourage academia, the military and SDP practitioners to look further into the field.

The chapter discusses the notion of ‘peace’ in international peace operations with a mandate from the United Nations Security Council, and how international law promotes or prevents the achievement of such peace. The chapter shows that international peace operations generally pursue a ‘liberal peace’, and how this general concept is translated into concrete functions in particular operations. The chapter shows that the UN Charter and international law in general do little to promote peace through the creation of peace-building or other peace operations, since they neither require nor encourage such creation even though it is permitted. The chapter discusses further how international humanitarian law, international human rights law, and other regimes that regulate the conduct of personnel may contribute to the achievement of peace in peace operations.

The UN Charter foresees activities mandated by the Security Council to maintain peace and security, and this chapter describes the form such activities should take. This chapter looks briefly at the Charter framework for peacekeeping, identifying a number of issues that are addressed more fully in subsequent sections on five different types of peace operations. In those sections, we describe the main characteristics of each type and provide illustrative examples to show how the practice and doctrine of peacekeeping has evolved. The penultimate section of the chapter takes a closer look at recent peace operations doctrine, as embodied in a series of landmark reports issued by the United Nations, starting with the highly influential Brahimi Report of 2000. The chapter concludes by considering four contemporary challenges for peace operations: the protection of civilians, the threat of violent extremism, gender and peace operations, and the dilemmas of state-building.

The protection of civilians in armed conflict (POC) since 1999 has been recognized as a core obligation of the United Nations, and as vital to the legitimation of the Security Council’s role and status in its efforts to control and confront large-scale violence. Over the course of this same period, and with the passage in 2000 of Security Council Resolution 1325, the women, peace and security (WPS) agenda has also become a prominent part of action associated with the protection of civilians. This chapter first discusses some of the steps that have been taken to put POC and WPS on the UN’s agenda, before turning to the official Chinese response to these two core areas of the UN’s activities. That response illustrates once again a complex interplay between Beijing’s understanding that it must be responsive in this area of action, while remaining attentive to its belief in the need to ensure the preservation of a state-based international order that includes a restrained UN Security Council interpretation of the types of conflict that represent threats to international peace and security. In both the POC and WPS policy areas, China accords a primary role to economic development as the most effective means of preventing the conflicts that are the source of civilian harm and for improving women’s rights and representation.

This chapter analyses the issue of legal responsibility arising from the trend among international organizations to use the services of private actors within peace operations. It has been argued in the literature that suitably controlled and regulated the use of contractors by the United Nations, European Union, and other organizations would bring significant benefits, not only in terms of cost-savings but also in terms of a removal of institutional dependence on voluntary and often under-equipped contributions from member states. While recognising the benefits to organizations that the greater use of contractors might bring, the chapter is concerned with issues of accountability and access to justice when human rights abuse has been committed by contractors. For the purposes of attribution of wrongful acts and omissions, it considers whether the effective control test is the most appropriate one for private contractors working for organizations or for troops contributing nations involved in institutionally mandated peace operations.