ABSTRACT
When UN Secretary-General Ralph Bunche laid out his basic principles of international peacekeeping in 1947—impartiality, consent, and the minimum use of force—he could scarcely have imagined the scope of peacekeeping operations in the second decade of the 21st century. Early UN peacekeeping operations, with the notable exception of UN intervention in the Korean War, saw “Blue Helmets” serving largely as buffer forces or monitors in cease-fire or treaty implementation. The late 1990s saw drastic re-thinking of that largely passive model of peacekeeping after perceived shortcomings of UN peacekeeping operations in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda brought the principle of strict impartiality into direct conflict with the emerging expectation of the protection of civilians.
