UN peacekeeping operations (catch all)

[SWJ Blog]

India and UN Peacekeeping: Declining Interest with Grave Implications

Entry Excerpt:



--------
Read the full post and make any comments at the SWJ Blog.
This forum is a feed only and is closed to user comments.

[davidbfpo]

Prompted by two Australian articles (see next post) I have searched SWC using 'peacekeeping'; there are numerous threads where it features, a far smaller number of threads where it is in the title and a few specific threads, e.g. East Timor.

I have merged six threads, some were SWJ Blog and renamed the thread as a catch all.

[davidbfpo]

Two articles from the Australian Lowy Institute:http://www.lowyinterpreter.org/post/...-Cambodia.aspx and:http://www.lowyinterpreter.org/post/...cognition.aspx

I noted in the first:

Retired General Mike Smith, Director of the Security Sector Advisory & Coordination Division in the UN Support Mission in Libya

In the second:

Peacekeeping is not alchemy. There are no magic transforming 'bullets' in communities serious enough to warrant deployment. Despite the best hopes of fast turnarounds, it is typically full of the painstaking negotiations and compromises that pock-mark nations rife with conflict, poverty and fear.

[davidbfpo]

Classic under-statement warning

United Nations peacekeeping missions routinely avoid using force to protect civilians who are under attack, intervening in only 20 percent of cases despite being authorized to do so by the U.N. Security Council...

"There is a persistent pattern of peacekeeping operations not intervening with force when civilians are under attack....Peacekeepers are absent from many locations when civilians come under attack, and when they are present, are unable or unwilling to prevent serious physical harm from being inflicted..

Link:http://mobile.reuters.com/article/id...40516?irpc=932

[Bill Moore]

Classic under-statement warning



Link:http://mobile.reuters.com/article/id...40516?irpc=932

What did GEN Rupert Smith write in his book? Something along the lines of we're willing to deploy military forces, but not employ them. The UN does great work in many fields, but it is a failure at peace operations.

[davidbfpo]

A rare article on events in Darfur, I'd forgotten there was a UN mission there, known as UNAMID (a hybrid with the AU) and in place for six years:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-r..._5683453.html?

The author ends with:

It's difficult to escape the conclusion that Darfur is the genocide that people got tired of. A terrible epitaph in the wake of so many impassioned declarations of "never again."

Facts & figures for UNAMID:http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/mi...id/facts.shtml