The UN's record in peace operations is long, various, distinguished by both accomplishments and failures, and most importantly, innovative. Unfulfilled expectations and escalating violence in Somalia, Rwanda, and Bosnia forced retrenchment upon UN peace operations_but at the same time, a new opportunity to enhance capacities, review strategies, redefine roles, and reaffirm responsibilities has opened up. Here, a dynamic group of leading diplomats, academics, and journalists combines forces with UN policymakers and leaders including current Secretary-General Kofi Annan and former Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali to explore how the international community can improve its practice in negotiating and implementing peace. They look at what works and what doesn't in UN peacemaking and peacekeeping, and then map out alternative futures for UN action in the 21st century.

This book critically examines the response of the United Nations (UN) to the problem of sexual exploitation in UN Peace Support Operations. It assesses the Secretary-General’s Bulletin on Special Protection from Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse (2003) (SGB) and its definition of sexual exploitation, which includes sexual relationships and prostitution. With reference to people affected by the policy (using the example of Bosnian women and UN peacekeepers), and taking account of both radical and ‘sex positive’ feminist perspectives, the book finds that the inclusion of consensual sexual relationships and prostitution in the definition of sexual exploitation is not tenable. The book argues that the SGB is overprotective, relies on negative gender and imperial stereotypes, and is out of step with international human rights norms and gender equality. It concludes that the SGB must be revised in consultation with those affected by it, namely local women and peacekeepers, and must fully respect their human rights and freedoms, particularly the right to privacy and sexuality rights.

An innovative analysis of accountability in international peacekeeping and human rights, with a focus on the UN's Haiti mission.

The UN plays a vital but underappreciated role in restoring the rule of law in countries recovering from civil war.

Revised and updated, The Law and Practice of the United Nations provides an analysis of the main legal issues surrounding the United Nations' practice, including a thorough discussion of Chapter VII of the Charter and its interpretation.

Confronted with the practical legal aspects of Peace Support Operations (PSO) in their daily work, the two authors realized that there was an urgent need for the international community of military and civilian lawyers, law enforcement agencies, policy makers, legal advisers and military commanders dealing with these types of missions to have a guidebook analyzing, questioning and providing some solutions to the practical legal aspects intrinsic in them and which are often known only to those who have been serving in the field. It was therefore decided to create a tool to record and diffuse the know-how acquired by those who have been directly confronted with these issues, in the field and at headquarters. Among the cutting-edge topics practitioners explore in Peace Support Operations & Their Legal Implications are human trafficking and illegal immigration in theatres of PSO such as the Balkans, arrest and detention of suspects of serious breaches of the laws of war, the relationship and role sharing of civilian law enforcement agencies and peacekeepers, the use of non-lethal and other weapons (e.g. riot control agents), criminal liability for breaches of international law and Rules Of Engagement. Contributions of a more strategic nature deal further with the complexities of Status of Forces Agreements and Memoranda of Understanding, the extraterritorial applicability of human rights obligations, the application of the law of occupation to peacekeeping forces, their new role and the relative problems in peace-building. The main objective of this guidebook is to provide the basis for further discussion, suggesting what should be done next, and to constitute a problem-solving tool for those deployed in the field, often secluded from the external world and confronted with difficulties to be solved immediately, under the pressure of time. The idea is to show them the path undertaken by others who have been confronted with similar problems and to share the knowledge and fight the power. Published under the Transnational Publishers imprint.

The Oxford Handbook on United Nations Peacekeeping Operations presents an innovative, authoritative, and accessible examination and critique of the United Nations peacekeeping operations. Since the late 1940s, but particularly since the end of the cold war, peacekeeping has been a central part of the core activities of the United Nations and a major process in global security governance and the management of international relations in general. The volume will present a chronological analysis, designed to provide a comprehensive perspective that highlights the evolution of UN peacekeeping and offers a detailed picture of how the decisions of UN bureaucrats and national governments on the set-up and design of particular UN missions were, and remain, influenced by the impact of preceding operations. The volume will bring together leading scholars and senior practitioners in order to provide overviews and analyses of all 65 peacekeeping operations that have been carried out by the United Nations since 1948. As with all Oxford Handbooks, the volume will be agenda-setting in importance, providing the authoritative point of reference for all those working throughout international relations and beyond.

This edited volume offers a first thorough review of peacekeeping theory and reality in contemporary contexts, and attempts to align the two to help inform practice.

Peace operations remain a principal tool for managing armed conflict and protecting civilians. The fully revised, expanded and updated third edition of Understanding Peacekeeping provides a comprehensive and up-to-date introduction to the theory, history, and politics of peace operations. Drawing on a dataset of nearly two hundred historical and contemporary missions, this book evaluates the changing characteristics of the contemporary international environment in which peace operations are deployed, the strategic purposes peace operations are intended to achieve, and the major challenges facing today’s peacekeepers. All the chapters have been revised and updated, and five new chapters have been added – on stabilization, organized crime, exit strategies, force generation, and the use of force. Part 1 summarizes the central concepts and issues related to peace operations. Part 2 charts the historical development of peacekeeping, from 1945 through to 2020. Part 3 analyses the strategic purposes that United Nations and other peace operations are intended to achieve – namely, prevention, observation, assistance, enforcement, stabilization, and administration. Part 4 looks forward and examines the central challenges facing today’s peacekeepers: force generation, the regionalization and privatization of peace operations, the use of force, civilian protection, gender issues, policing and organized crime, and exit strategies.

This book explores the question of whether peacekeeping commanders can be held accountable for a failure to protect the civilian population in the mission area. This requires an assessment of whether peacekeeping commanders have an obligation to act against such serious crimes being committed under domestic and international law. The work uses the cases of the Dutch and Belgian peacekeeping commanders in Srebrenica and Kigali as examples, but it also places the analysis into the context of contemporary peacekeeping operations. It unfolds two main arguments. First, it provides a critical note to the contextual interpretation given to international law in relation to peacekeeping. It is argued that establishing a specific paradigm for peacekeeping operations with clear rules of interpretation and benchmark criteria would benefit peacekeeping and international law by making the contextual interpretation of international law redundant. Second, it is held that alternative options to the existing forms of criminal responsibility for military commanders should be considered, possibly focusing more clearly on failing to fulfil a norm of protection that is specific to peacekeeping and distinct from protective obligations under international human rights law and international humanitarian law.