UN Peacekeeping

Lessons Learned

Bibliographic Data

ID12430360
AuthorsDavid M Malone (0000-0002-4257-4606, corresponding author), Ramesh Thakur (0000-0002-2441-8108)
Year2001
Volume7
Issue1
Pages11-17
Publication date2001-07-28
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueGlobal Governance A Review of Multilateralism and International Organizations (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1075-2846 • E-ISSN: 1942-6720
PublisherLynne Rienner Publishers (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1163/19426720-00701003
OpenAlexW214300895
LanguageEN
Citations received15

The crisis that confronted the UN's peacekeeping operation in Sierra Leone in 2000 was a sad commentary on lessons learned, those not learned, and those forgotten over five decades of peacekeeping. The UN Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) nearly imploded under fire as a result of poor planning, underequipped and illtrained military personnel, inadequate communication, weak command and control (the deputy force commander reportedly refused to obey direct orders from the force commander), and determined local spoilers (led by the notorious Foday Sankoh). In the wake of the events in Sierra Leone, the UN exposed one of its least attractive pathologies--the tendency of the Secretariat and key member states to engage in mutual recrimination whenever violence occurs in distant lands. In late 1999, the United Nations issued a remarkably frank, self-critical report on its role in events leading to the deaths of thousands of civilians under its protection in Srebrenica in 1995. [1] This grim text chronicled a tragedy of errors, most of them avoidable. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan assumed full responsibility for these mistakes, which had occurred during his watch as under-secretary-general for peacekeeping. A month after the Srebrenica report, an international panel convened by Annan and chaired by former Swedish prime minister Ingmar Carlsson tabled a similarly sobering report on the UN's failure to prevent the genocide of half a million Rwandans in 1994. [2] These reports, and another recent remarkably frank UN document on failings in implementation of UN sanctions against Angola, suggest that the organization today is less interested in ducking blame and covering itself from attack than it is in improving performance. [3] Capitalizing on the impact of these findings within the UN and among member states, Annan appointed a high-level international panel to make recommendations for changes in UN peacekeeping. It reported its findings on 21 August 2000. [4] The panel was led by Lakhdar Brahimi, a former Algerian foreign minister and a highly effective UN special representative in Haiti, South Africa, Afghanistan, and elsewhere in recent years. His colleagues on the panel brought a cross-section of indepth experience relevant to peacekeeping. The Sierra Leone crisis, which broke out soon after the panel was assembled in May, helped to concentrate panelists' minds on the recurring nature of problems in UN peacekeeping. They found a great deal to criticize, often in blunt language. Their report highlights the diffusion of responsibility at the UN, documents the poor behavior to which this leads, and pinpoints what needs to be done to improve the UN's performance. The primary responsibility of the United Nations is the maintenance of international peace and security; a second major responsibility is development. The two are increasingly fused in today's globalized world, with sound global governance being a common solution to both sets of problems. The Secretary-General's Millennium Report [5] is organized around the themes of striving for freedom from fear (through conflict management and resolution) and freedom from want (through economic development and growth), and sustaining the future (through careful husbanding of the earth's resources and ecosystem). A recurring theme in the report is the need for the transition from a culture of reaction to one of prevention. Freedom from fear is a sine qua non of the other two elements in Annan's trinity. Wealthy nations and those who live in them will not be able to live free of fear or secure a sustainable future so long as over a billion people live in servitude to want. Complex humanitarian operations are thus at the cutting edge of the UN's core function in the contemporary world disorder; their well-publicized failures--in the former Yugoslavia, Somalia, Rwanda, Angola, and Sierra Leone--have damaged the credibility of the organization. The shortcomings of UN peacekeeping operations and their reform can be addressed at three levels: policy, managerial, and operational

Ethnology · Genocide · Peacekeeping · Political science · Sanctions · Secretary general · Sierra leone · Sociology · Tragedy (event · Global Peace and Security Dynamics · International Development and Aid · Law · Peacebuilding and International Security

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