ABSTRACT
The resumption of large-scale fighting in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) at the end of 2008 and the humanitarian disaster surrounding it have once again exposed the limitations of UN peacekeeping. MONUC, the UN Mission in the DRC, which is the largest UN peacekeeping force in the world today, is facing many of the same accusations as missions before it and is blamed by all sides for failing to prevent massacres or to meet the needs of civilian populations caught up in war. It was reported that some 250,000 civilians had been displaced by the fighting by mid November 2008 and, although UN forces had stopped the regional capital of Goma from falling, rebel forces were advancing in other locations across the east. In part the problem is one of resources and competence. Even with the 17,000 troops it had in late 2008, MONUC was ill-equipped to address the enormous challenges in the east of the country. More fundamentally, MONUC’s activities on the ground can never be a substitute for what is currently lacking: an overall political strategy involving key regional actors aimed at addressing underlying and unresolved issues at the heart of the on-going conflict. MONUC’s current predicament only serves to highlight, albeit in extreme form, questions that have too often plagued UN missions about the precise mandates under which forces operate, the quality of the forces despatched on missions and the UN’s organisational capacity to manage and sustain its peacekeeping responsibilities.
