CIAO DATE: 04/2012
December 2011
The Geneva Centre for Security Policy
The proliferation of intra-state conflicts in the post-Cold War era has led to a substantial increase in the number of United Nations (UN) peacekeeping operations, resulting in the creation of forty-eight peacekeeping missions since 1990. The unprecedented challenges faced in the 1990’s – and in particular, the failures in Rwanda, Srebrenica, and Somalia – obliged the UN to revisit and rethink its peacekeeping strategies. Since 1999, with the creation of the UN Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL), the UN Security Council has made the protection of civilians in armed conflict an explicit responsibility and a primary operational task for UN peacekeeping operations. In 2011, sixteen of those missions operate across five continents. The protection of civilians is a mandated concern for all the large missions, functioning as a fundamental commitment “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war”, a central objective envisaged in the Charter of the UN. This research paper analyses the evolution of the protection provisions of UN mandates and assesses the protection effectiveness of four UN peacekeeping missions: UNAMSIL in Sierra Leone, the UN Operation in Côte d’Ivoire (UNOCI), the UN Mission in Liberia (UNMIL), and the UN Organization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) (MONUC). The author draws on his decade serving in these missions to address recurrent questions about UN peacekeeping and recent evolutions of their mandates. Are expectations of civilian protection by UN peacekeepers realistic? What are the operational challenges that the protection of civilians poses to UN missions? Where and in what circumstances does the use of force become a realistic option for protection? What changes to policy and practice might be needed to better align use of force expectations with protection outcomes?
Resource link: Great Expectations: UN Peacekeeping, Civilian Protection, and the Use of Force [PDF] - 1.9M