Un Peacekeeping Success And Failures Since The Second World War International Law Essay

It’s a very appreciative step taken by this organization of UN for helping countries torn by conflict and creates conditions worldwide for lasting peace. The first peacekeeping mission was established in 1948 when Security Council authorized the deployment of UN military observers in the middle-east. United Nations peacekeeping operations have traditionally been associated with chapter 6 and a half of the charter. Within this wider context, Peacekeeping operations are consisted with some of core functions and also three principles. The core functions of UN peacekeeping operations are to create a secure and stable environment for establishing peace in the world with full respect of human law; Help the political process and guidelines for making up a effective institutions of governance; Provide a framework for United Nations and other international actors to pursue their best job in a coherent way. Three basic principles of peacekeeping operations are: Consent (accept) of the parties, Impartiality and Non-use of force except in self-defence and defence of the mandate. These three principles are inter-related and it is important that their meaning and relationship should be understood by all those who involved in the planning and conduct of United Nations peace-keeping operations, so that they can apply it effectively. From the beginning of peacekeeping operation, there has been a combination of success and failure in their peacekeeping missions. Many more cases and factors are related with that issue.

Since the beginning of peacekeeping operation (1948) UN peacekeepers have undertaken 64 field missions, which, among many other things, provided essential security and support to millions of people; Did a very good job by enabling people in dozens of countries to participate in free and fair elections, Supported helpless people and refugees in many ways (Providing shelter and relief to millions of refugees from war and persecution, and supporting the repatriation and resettlement of refugees and displaced persons). UN peacekeeping operation got some tremendous success in resolving some wars and conflicts. United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) was one of the most successful and ambitious operation taken by UN peacekeepers. It ended within the specific time by mandate; it stayed within budget; supervised and conducted a free and fair election; and dismantled 70 percent of opposing military. Peacekeeping Operation in Mozambique (ONUMOZ, 1992-1994) could be another good example of United Nations successful peacekeeping mission. The successful factors behind the ONUMOZ were to Resettle 75 per cent of the people internally displaced had been resettled and most refugees had returned to Mozambique; Demobilization of more than 76,000 soldiers from both sides, ONUMOZ also recovered about 155,000 weapons and The country’s first multiparty elections were held in Oct. 1994 supported by U.N. The mission was fully completed at the end of Jan. 1995.

Though UN able to get quite a good number of successes in resolving wars, but in many more cases they failed to perform their best act. If we going to analyze the Failures of UN as an international organization, which is the only hope for the whole world to maintain peace around the globe, Bosnia Herzegovinian could be a perfect example to discuss and analyze what could be the reasons behind the failures of UN in keeping peace. Three main reasons could be found out primarily of UN towards peacekeeping. Firstly, UN does not have precedent for pre-emptive peacekeeping: When Bosnia first asked UN monitors on its borders with Serbia in 1992, the request was turned down because there was no precedent for pre-emptive peacekeeping. Secondly, Dependency on regional Organization: Europe showed that Yugoslavia is its domain and made an unsuccessful attempt to coup with the situation. Thirdly, Partiality of UN and Security Council.

September 1991, UN Security Council adopted resolution No 713, imposing arm embargo on the territory which helped Serbs as they were already well equipped as an organized army against the civilians.

UN protection force, UNPROFOR, was only deployed in 1993, when the international court of justice ruled that genocide was taking place. But the Security Council gave the peacemakers limited fire power, and a weak mandate which made it difficult for them to protect the civilian population against the atrocities like massacre of Srebrenica and the systematic rape of 60 thousand women.

I am going to focus UN peacekeeping failures in relation with some interstate conflict. As we know that, a conflict between two or more countries are considered to be interstate conflict. According to a study, From 1945 to 1999, appeximately 39 internationals wars and 4433 thousand people lost their lives. As UN is performing well in peace keeping process but it has many failures to govern peace between states and a huge number of people are suffering and women, children are in miserable condition. I am discussing some failure reasons in below.

Non implementation of resolutions

There are many resolutions in relations to peace keeping process which still not implemented perfectly by UN. Jammu and Kashmir could be another big example of Non-implementation of resolutions. India denoted the dispute to the United Nations on 1 January. The resolution was passed by Security Council of United Nations under chapter VI of UN Charter. In a resolution dated August 13, 1948, UN asked to Pakistani soldiers to remove their troops and india also to withdraw the bulk other forces. The hopeless people of Kashmir expected “free and fair” plebiscite was to be held supported by UN to allow the Kashmiri people to decide their future. During the full period of Kashmir Conflict, the U.N Security Council passed 23 resolutions between 1948 and 1971 but none of these resolutions were implemented perfectly. However, U.N Security Council failed to keep the promise to settle down the Kashmir Case and recently they removed the dispute of Jammu and Kashmir from their list. United Nations failed to solve dispute in relations to peace keeping process and the implementations of resolutions. By monitoring this interstate war, the prime reasons of U.N failures could be like this which I mentioned below.

Lake of military organization

Dependency on local organization

Lake of information which country is wrong

Aggressiveness from occupied countries

Dependency for funds

Effectiveness of veto power

Interest of rich countries

Lake of unite in developed countries in relation to peace keeping process

Lake of democracy in poor countries

Intrastate conflicts are a growing trend and it has been the rule rather than exception. Of the conflicts in which UN missions were undertaken prior to 1988, 7 out of 13 could be considered interstate. After 1988, however, the overwhelming majority have been intrastate.

United Nations has been challenged by such conflicts and has failed to govern situations under the peace keeping process which a lot of devastating results has occurred. Such failure can be traced in mainly on:

-that UN is more suited to resolving interstate disputes based on sovereignty principles of state

-lack of resources especially military resource

-In Bosnia insufficiently armed peace keepers were ignored or taken hostages, in Somalia the mission was doomed after Us forces pull out and in Rwanda not a single country answered the first call for contribution which 800,000 people lost their life and the failure was even officially approved by UN that UN has failed to do any more better to prevent the out comings of the war happening. In that case, the UN’s peace keeping will continue to experience setbacks, as evidenced more recently in East Timor and Sierra Leone, because UN still has not made change in its vision and mandate. The state centered pattern continues to limit the effectiveness which these narrow confines on the strength of its greatest asset: Universality.

http://ericsquire.com/un-secur.htm

http://www.un.org/News/ossg/sgsm_rwanda.htm