CIAO DATE: 08/2009
April 2009
Center on International Cooperation
The politics of peacekeeping: crisis and opportunity. United Nations peace operations face an extended and dangerous period of strategic uncertainty. A series of setbacks have coincided with military overstretch and the financial crisis, raising the risk that UN peacekeeping may contract, despite high demand. Much would be lost if it did. UN peacekeeping has proved to be a versatile tool for deterring or reversing inter-state conflict, ending civil wars, mitigating humanitarian crises, and extending state authority in areas where state capacity is weak or contested. Mediation and peacekeeping have contributed to an 80% decline in total armed conflict since the end of the Cold War. Not all operations succeed, or succeed in full. But to meet future challenges, both individual operations and the peacekeeping system as a whole require continued political, military and financial commitment by states and institutions. That necessitates distinguishing the symptoms from the causes of the current crisis of confidence in peacekeeping. Symptoms include long delays in deploying troops, reversals on the ground, personnel overstretch at headquarters, mounting financial pressures, and diffuse attention in the Security Council.
Resource link: Building on Brahimi: Peacekeeping in an era of Strategic Uncertainty [PDF] - 2.0M