from the United Nations Peacekeeping Operations page on the SWJ Reference Library.

United Nations Peacekeeping Best Practices - United Nations' policy, analysis and lessons learned for the peacekeeping community. Library of documents, including lessons learned studies, discussion papers, policy papers and reports.

Handbook on United Nations Multidimensional Peacekeeping Operations - December 2003. As peacekeeping has evolved, particularly since the late 1980s, a growing number of United Nations peacekeeping operations have become multidimensional in nature, composed of a range of components, including military, civilian police, political affairs, rule of law, human rights, humanitarian, reconstruction, public information and gender. There are also a number of areas, such as mission support and security and safety of personnel, that remain essential to peacekeeping regardless of a particular mission’s mandate. This Handbook is intended to serve as an introduction to the different components of multidimensional peacekeeping operations. It is not intended to provide strategic or policy guidance. Rather, it is intended to provide field personnel who are new to the United Nations, or who are being deployed to one of our multidimensional peacekeeping operations for the first time, with general background on the responsibilities of each component of our operations and how these fit together to form the whole. We have tried to make the Handbook as brief and practical as possible, while doing justice to the broad areas of work in which many of our operations are engaged.

The Use of Force in UN Peace Operations - Simon Chesterman. New York University of Law paper for the United Nations. This paper reviews the changing approach to the use of force in UN peace operations, with particular emphasis on responses to the security vacuum that typically arises in a post-conflict environment. The United Nations has generally been reluctant to allow military units under its command to use force. The three peace operations in which troops under UN command engaged in the use of force on a significant scale — Congo from 1960–1963, Somalia in 1993, and Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1994–1995 — were traumatic experiences for the organization. The controversies to which these operations gave rise were surpassed only by two occasions on which force was not used at all: in Rwanda and Srebrenica. Such reluctance to use force is consistent with the traditional conception of peacekeeping as an impartial activity undertaken with the consent of all parties, in which force is used only in self-defence. Over the years, however, all three characteristics of traditional peacekeeping — consent, impartiality, minimum use of force — have been brought into question.

American Civilian Police in UN Peace Operations - William Hayden. United States Institute of Peace report, July 2001. This report presents the major issues, concerns and recommendations that emerged from the United States Institute of Peace symposium "American Civilian Police in International Peace Operations: What have we learned?"

Evolving Models of Peacekeeping: Policy Implications and Responses - Dr. Bruce Jones and Feryal Cherif. New York State University Center on International Cooperation study. It is an open question whether 11 September 2001 ushered in a fourth phase of evolution in peacekeeping, the first elements of which – an assertive US policy, a shift in geographical focus, a more complex security environment, a challenging political terrain for the UN – are beginning to be played out. At the very least, the more assertive US security policy is producing a series of shifts in the approaches of other states and institutions to security issues (particularly in Europe), which are already altering the strategic landscape within which UN peacekeeping operates. Further, a shift in emphasis within the Security Council towards terrorism, the Middle East, and WMD proliferation is likely, over the medium term, to have an impact on the level of organizational resources devoted to strengthening peacekeeping. Ongoing changes in the pattern of conflict, and changing perceptions of security threats, may yet further reshape the peacekeeping landscape. This paper addresses recent and ongoing evolutions in both the form and context of UN peacekeeping.

Peace(keeping) in Our Time: The UN as a Professional Military Manager - John Hillen. Parameters article, Autumn 1996. This article presents the thesis that the United Nations does not have an inherent capacity for such professional military management, and that such capabilities were not "present but dormant" throughout the Cold War. In fact, the UN is inherently anti-professional in the military sense; at best, it is suited for managing only quasi-military and very limited operations such as observation missions and small, traditional peacekeeping missions. The recent steps taken to professionalize UN military operations have failed because the military capability of the UN cannot be separated from its political nature, from political characteristics that purposely limit and constrain its forays into the functional management of military force. To paraphrase Clausewitz, UN military operations have their own grammar (no matter how unintelligible), but their logic is the logic of the UN's political character.

Policy Challenges of UN Peace Operations - James Baker. Parameters article, Spring 1994. As recently as 1990, a mere handful of US Army officers were seconded to the United Nations as military observers. Barely four years later, Army troops serving under the UN flag (or in direct support of United Nations operations) number in the thousands. US participation in such ventures can be expected to continue, and the Army's institutional interest in UN peace operations is rapidly rising. Like war itself, a peace operation is a military undertaking with a political aim. But unlike warfare, with its long history, peace operations are a relatively recent military phenomenon. Historical precedents are few. This fact alone makes peace operations, in all their forms, a special challenge not only for those who implement policy but for those who make it, both in and out of uniform. The salient policy challenges are in the areas of multilateral operations, mission termination, and combat readiness.

Is the UN Peacekeeping Role in Eclipse? - Robert NcClure and Morton Orlov II. Parameters article, Autumn 1999. To deal with the rising demand for its peacekeeping services, in 1992 the UN created a Department of Peacekeeping Operations--also called DPKO. That department underwent predictable growing pains as member states sought to have the world's premier international organization assume increasing responsibility for resolving conflict in the new world order. This article will outline those initiatives in UN peacekeeping management and describe the recent proposals to restructure DPKO. These recent initiatives, born out of member state frustration, mission/resource mismatch, and a diminished appetite for global agendas, will certainly have a significant effect, in ways yet to be determined, on the next ten years of UN peacekeeping.