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Peacekeeping - how useful is it?
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1. Introduction This report has been written to try to assess the usefulness of peacekeeping, and does this mainly by looking at three different case studies. The fact that it uses case studies as a measure of usefulness means that a lot of the information is practical in that you can see what difference the peacekeepers made, as opposed to merely theoretical. I chose three different case studies, and briefly explained the situation although hopefully only enough to prove the point I wanted to make. I tried to avoid basic narration that didn’t prove anything, and so as a result this report would be intended for an audience who knew what had gone on in each area. Therefore the most appropriate audience/readership would be other students (and tutors) within the Peacekeeping/History areas, although nature of the subject means that any well-and-widely-read person would follow it. 2. Peacekeeping – how useful is it? In order for an operation to be classed as a peacekeeping operation, it must fulfil certain characteristics and values, and it must also operate within a certain context, although this doesn’t mean that every operation gets given the same mandate. The variety of situations/conflicts has meant that different approaches are required and the mandates have varied each time – over the years however even the mandates have fallen into certain types of peacekeeping operations, for example traditional peacekeeping versus preventative deployment. As the main – but not the only – peacekeeping body, the United Nations tends to be the subject of most discussions on the merits of peacekeeping. When the UN was established in 1945 it filled a gap – that being to act as a recognised independent body to intervene and help to defuse conflicts that could affect international peace. No-one can dispute that the aims of peacekeeping are worthwhile, however there are so many things that are placed under the umbrella of peacekeeping that things can get confusing. The definition of peacekeeping for the purposes of this report is that which is covered by Dag Hammarskjold’s so-called Chapter Six-and-a-half, i.e. somewhere between the traditional Chapter Six methods and the more forceful Chapter Seven methods. In March 1995 a report written by Jarat Chopra appeared in The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, discussing UN peacekeeping. Chopra argues that the UN has failed in many of its missions and that its concepts are now outdated. He is calling for more involvement by the international community, and for future operations to be given mandates that to me, sound eerily like the mandate for the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) - for example the tasks he proposes be included in mandates are governorship, control, and law and order. When the UN went into Cambodia they took over major government ministries, and practically ran the country until elections could install a new and valid government. He also writes that “when human rights violations within a nation become shocking, intervention is called for” (p35). Yet no nation wants to see human rights blatantly ignored and abused, however the international community cannot simply go wading in wherever she likes or sees fit, to law down the law and impose internationally made decisions. To what rights have we to do that? The UN has at least recognised this basic context in which an operation must take place. I do not mean for this to sound like a UN advertisement however; I believe the basic principles which govern the establishment of UN peacekeeping missions are right and the only way to go about things, but there are areas for reform. For example the UN can seem slow to respond to situations but this is partly because of the way that it is financed, and the problems that it has collecting the money from the member states. For example Cyprus was initially to be paid for via voluntary contributions (which Britain and the United States promised to make) and it was only in 1993 when it was changed so that it was included in the mandatory assessments that each member pays. If it wasn’t for the fact that Britain was initially involved because of her relationship with Cyprus there is doubt that this operation would ever have been established. The issue is not so much peacekeeping itself but more how it is approached and managed, because that is when its usefulness can become hampered. The most effective way to gauge the usefulness of peacekeeping is to look at past examples, and assess whether they made a positive contribution, and how much they affected what was going on. 2.1 Cyprus Cyprus is one of the UN’s longest running peacekeeping missions, and one which is still operational today. For this reason I have chosen it as a case study, to look at whether this can be classed as a success, and to assess how useful it has been. Initial involvement concerned only Britain, as Britain was a formal guarantor of the 1960 constitution. However this became more important on an international scale, especially with a view to NATO, and so Britain and the United States approached the Security Council to request a formal UN peacekeeping force. The result was UNFICYP: United Nations (Peacekeeping) Force in Cyprus, and its mandate was a traditional Chapter Six mandate. Between the years of 1964 and 1974, there was no buffer zone and so the work of the UN personnel was made harder because there was no clear split between the Greek-Cypriots and the Turkish-Cypriots. It was harder for them to keep the calm when the two parties were in such close proximity to each other. However, following the establishment of the buffer zone in 1974 the UN have had control of a complete buffer zone reaching 180 miles across the width of Cyprus, estimated at 3% of the total land area (figures taken from Parsons, 1995). Although only 20 yards in width in some areas at others the width is four miles and so the peacekeepers have a clearly defined area to work within – the area has even had an all weather track running the length of it since 1986. The UN’s presence has most definitely had a positive effect: every day, especially in the narrow part of the buffer zone where there have been more clashes, there have been many minor conflicts but the UN has managed to settle them all. Because the conflicts are being dealt with on the field, at the lowest level of the hierarchy (on both sides), chances of the problems escalating are minimised because tempers are more easily cooled when they have not had a chance to get far.
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