The article analyses the advances, setbacks, and new and remaining challenges in the implementation of the Brahimi Report’s (2000) recommendations 20 years after its publication. Because of the ...innovations it proposed, the document is considered a milestone in the consolidation of a doctrinal culture of UN peace operations. However, we argue that the deployment of stabilisation operations, aimed at providing task-forces to support national authorities in neutralising non-state armed groups, undermines the Report’s guidelines and exacerbate intricate issues already identified in it. We discuss stabilisation to evidence how it is at odds with the doctrinal culture established before, creates new, and accentuates remaining challenges for peace operations. Methodologically, the article is based on an analysis of UN official documents to understand peace operations’ normative and practical adaptation in recent years.
This paper contributes to theory development about the politics of overlapping organizations. It explains how organizational overlap can affect the execution of organizational mandates. Within the ...universe of intergovernmental overlapping organizations, I argue that we need to study institutional positions in conjunction with governmental preferences. Based on these two variables, member-states have different strategies at their disposal: hostage-taking, forum-shopping, and brokering. These strategies affect the formulation and implementation of multilateral commitments. Taking the EU-NATO overlap as an example, I show how these strategies can lead to compromised organizational mandates, where hostage-taking leads to long delays in sending troops, operational uncertainties and wasted resources and brokers are left with innovating informal solutions.
The post-Cold War era has witnessed a significant increase in the size and scope of peace operations. However, the role and purpose of peace operations have not received commensurate attention within ...the intellectual context of theories of international relations. Comprehension of theoretical foundations of international relations is quintessential in understanding the motives behind, and implications of third-party intervention in the quest for a viable peace. This paper presents a synopsis of major theoretical paradigms in world politics with particular emphasis on their understanding of and implications for contemporary peace operations. The paper strives to delineate the main planks of a particular theoretical paradigm with special reference to the underpinnings of peace operations. Towards the end, the possibility of training peacekeepers to serve as a bridge between the theory and practice of peace operations has been explored. The research findings shall serve the purpose of filling a theoretical gap in peace operations studies and shall decipher the theoretical basis of the acerbic arguments against peace operations espoused by the obstructionists to the peace processes.
In seeking to determine whether and in what way the experience in Rwanda may have changed peacekeeping, this article examines three official international institutional reports that were issued after ...the genocide in Rwanda. Their discussion of United Nations peacekeeping after Rwanda, each from a slightly different vantage point, provides a window into the thinking of the time as to what changes should occur in peacekeeping as a result of the Rwanda experience. Two reports focused on the future of peacekeeping more generally, the Brahimi Report, published in 2000, and the hippo Report, published in 2015 are used as benchmarks to determine whether and to what extent those proposed changes occurred. The article argues that while many changes in peacekeeping can be identified since 1994, peacekeeping remains unchanged at its core in that it is still based on the foundational principles of consent, impartiality and minimal use of force.
Many scholars contend that United Nations peacekeeping has entered a period of transition, but there is little consensus about the nature of this transition or where it may lead. This article seeks ...to place these debates into a broader theoretical and historical context. Peacekeeping, I argue, is but the latest instantiation of 'collective conflict management' (CCM), which has taken many different forms in the past and likely will again in the future. In particular, this article seeks to explain the international systemic conditions that give rise to, and transform, CCM over time.
O presente estudo incide sobre a protecção do património cultural no contexto das operações de paz. De modo a abordarmos o tema, procederemos, num momento inicial, ao esclarecimento de dois conceitos ...essenciais no campo em que nos movemos - os conceitos de património cultural e operações de paz. De seguida, iremos analisar a questão da aplicabilidade das normas de Direito Internacional Humanitário às forças das Nações Unidas envolvidas em operações de paz, dando conta da evolução registada na matéria; posteriormente, focaremos, de modo particular, a possibilidade de aplicação das normas relativas à protecção do património cultural em caso de conflito armado à actuação de tais formações. Por fim, reflectindo sobre o percurso realizado, apresentaremos as nossas conclusões sobre o problema, o qual se reveste de grande importância na actual sociedade internacional.
At a time when the liberal international order is in crisis, several middle powers including Canada have taken the lead in pushing for the inclusion of women in peace operations under the banner of ...the 1325 agenda. This article assesses the implementation of the 1325 agenda in peacekeeping operations. We contend that the limited results of the agenda should primarily be attributed to the way liberal middle powers promoted it, rather than to opposition from conservative or less gendered-minded UN member states. We conclude by reflecting on the vulnerability of this agenda to changes in the dominant international ethos.
Abstract
The integration of human rights in United Nations peace operations has witnessed remarkable progress during the past fifteen years. This article analyzes the evolution of human rights ...integration in the peace and security architecture in relation to peace operations, focusing on the achievements and shortcomings of Headquarters-led policies and reforms of the last decade, as well as the impact of recent Security Council dynamics. The article reviews the significant realizations on both the substantive and structural fronts and argues that ownership of the human rights agenda and policies, as well as accountability and leadership for their implementation, warrants a greater commitment of the organization. Such commitment should translate into institutionalizing Headquarters’ cooperation mechanisms, creating further space for human rights in decision-making, allocating adequate resources, and strengthening accountability for risk-mitigation policies, inter alia. A stronger political will is equally required to better articulate human rights issues in relation to conflict analysis, prevention and peacebuilding, in support of political objectives of peace operations.
The Protection of Civilians (PoC) has been part of United Nations (UN) peace operations for twenty years. Today, PoC is irrefutably a ‘centre of gravity’ for how UN peace operations see and portray ...themselves. Despite negative perceptions, a great deal of progress has been made in how missions prepare for and respond to the demands of protection mandates. For the vulnerable populations they serve, mandates to protect raise expectations and provide hope that peacekeepers will safeguard them. Yet efforts to implement PoC mandates have encountered a range of problems, which peace operations have struggled to address. This article critically reflects on the past two decades of promoting, planning for and practicing protection in UN peace operations. It argues that while the achievements are many, significant challenges remain and much more must be done to deliver on this cardinal obligation.
This article argues that UN peace operations play a central role in the nexus between policing and counterinsurgency, and constitute one of the underappreciated sites and circuits of counterinsurgent ...knowledge. It posits that the convergence between peace operations and counterinsurgency has been driven not only (or even primarily) by these mission's more assertive military posture under 'stabilization', but also by the turn to 'polickeeping', the growing role of police forces and increasing importance of policing tasks in peacekeeping. The stabilization/policekeeping mindset rests on the assumption of a continuum from minor instances of disorders to full-blown armed conflict, leading to an expansive understanding of what may constitute a threat to stability and require international intervention. The articles teases out the macro and micro manifestations of this mindset through the lens of UN peace operations' response to civil unrest and demonstrations. It shows that, because peace operations are a point of cross-fertilization for the creation and transmission of global policing practices, UN protest policing reverberates beyond the specific countries in which peace operations are deployed. Peace operations create a global demand for and supply of specific skills and tools, in particular paramilitary police forces.
