ABSTRACT
Traditional peacekeeping has been largely undertaken with the consent of the parties to the conflict. This experience has conditioned responses and expectations of goals and tactics profoundly. In these consensual operations the conflict was either ended or it was anticipated that it soon would be at least suspended. The security situation seemed to favour civilian relief agencies, and the risk to them was usually low enough to be acceptable. That relatively permissive security environment did not call for a high degree of cooperation between military forces and civilian agencies, and they tended to operate in relative isolation from one another. That has changed greatly in the past decade or so. To appreciate how this scenario has altered, we need to review the consent issue, to see how it has affected peace operations, then to re-examine how changed circumstances have altered practices – or how they have failed to do so.
