Managing the World Economy: Fifty Years After Bretton Woods

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Department of Politics

COURSEWORK COVER SHEET

Does UN peacekeeping keep the peace?

Introduction:

The post-second World War time was embedded with strings of conflicts around the world. As nations were unable to bear the burden of more destruction, they were desperate to maintain the hardly achieved peace and lead them towards a permanent stability. And to avoid the repetitions of the unpredictable conflicts, whether to be inter-states or within the states, the notion of a third and unbiased force, working under the United Nations’ (UN) umbrella was created. The fundamental aim of this notion or technique was to preserve the peace and implement the agreements through peacekeeping mechanism. The concept of peace-keeping, therefore, was to maintain, observe and to monitor the situation with the deployment of peacekeeping force. This essay will firstly, define the expression ‘peacekeeping’ itself, and then to elaborate on the UN Security Council Mandates, and will evaluate UN peacekeeping activities in the light of both its strengths and shortcomings by examining the empirical cases of peacekeeping operation since its inception.

Discussion:

Peacekeeping according to the UN is ‘a way to help countries torn by conflict crate conditions for lasting peace’. (Heywood, 2014) argues that ‘the term peacekeeping is not found in the UN charter, and nevertheless, over the years, peacekeeping has come to be the most significant way in which the UN has fulfilled its responsibility to maintain international peace and security, falling somewhere between the UN’s commitment to resolve disputes peacefully through means such as negotiation and mediation (chapter Six) and more forceful action to maintain security (Chapter Seven)’.  Evidence shows that there has been a rapid decline in interstate wars and at the same time a comparable rise in internal ones. As (Yilmaz, 2005) argues that ‘Indeed, one clear aspect of the Cold World War has been the prevalence of such tension within state or between those just gained independence. As on some particular occasions, it is the lack or failure of governments that has been the main driving force for the conflicts, which, in any respect, the outcome is the conflict that bears many characteristics of civil war to a degree of not having a clear battlefield, no sharp line between fighters and civilians, various groups with unbalanced power and the lack of trust that make the fighting continue’.