ABSTRACT
The United Nations’ (UN) credibility in Africa was badly shaken by its controversial intervention in a turbulent civil war in the former Belgian Congo in the early 1960s. Today, the organization is struggling to keep peace in the same country in another protracted civil war four decades later. The Congo, a huge country at the heart of Africa, is a perfect symbol of the difficulties that the UN has experienced in its peacekeeping efforts in Africa. This chapter assesses six major UN peace operations undertaken in Africa after the end of the Cold War: Mozambique, Angola, Somalia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). All six conflicts examined are cases of civil war, reflecting the changing nature of post-Cold War peacekeeping. The varied cases, most of which have seen the large-scale deployment of troops, have been selected for the significant lessons that they provide for UN peacekeeping in Africa.
