The United Nations

Today the UN is and remains the single most important actor deploying peacekeeping operations around the world. Of the currently 16 operations, nine are located in Africa.2 No other continent has hosted peacekeeping missions to the extent Africa is and since the end of 2013 the African contribution to UN peacekeeping has surpassed that from Asia, who traditionally were the largest troop contributors. Thus, UN peacekeeping with its large-scale deployments is to a vast extent African in focus and content. Therewith, the UN occupies a central position within the African security regime complex on peacekeeping. It is effectively bridging the regional with the global level. Thus, its peacekeeping doctrines, capacities and institutionalised links to the AU are of pivotal importance to understand how the regime complex works. The UN’s activism relies as much on the demand for peacekeeping as it logically follows from the UN Charter. The maintenance of ‘international peace and security’ is most prominently placed in Article 1 paragraph 1 of the Charter. Chapters VI and VII grant the UN Security Council far reaching competences to settle conflicts and even apply enforcement measures. In principle the Security Council is authorised to ‘investigate any dispute’ (Art. 34) whereby dispute settlement in the first instance refers to non-coercive means such as mediation and negotiation (Art. 33). While Article 33 does not exclude any other actor from seeking a peaceful solution to a conflict threatening international peace, Article 39 assigns the Security Council the right to ‘determine the existence of any threat to peace’ and Article 42 allows the Council to take ‘action by air, sea, or land forces as may be necessary to maintain or restore international peace and security.’ Although the Charter does not mention the term peacekeeping, Chapter VII and

especially its Article 42 have been perceived to provide legal coverage for UN peacekeeping operations whose mandating has been centralised at the UN Security Council. As the Charter only provides for minimal guidance on questions of peacekeeping, the doctrinal development took place on different occasions and was influenced by peacekeeping successes and maybe more so by UN failures after the end of the Cold War, as well as by increased institutional capacity for managing peacekeeping operations at headquarters level. The need for a more systematic approach to peacekeeping only emerged with the end of the Cold War. While the UN took a long break from deploying peacekeepers in Africa after its Congo mission in the 1960s, it came back to the continent with the Cold War ending. During the late 1980s and early 1990s a triple transformation of UN peacekeeping can be observed.3 First, the number of peacekeeping missions increased massively. From its foundation until 1987, 13 peacekeeping missions were deployed, as many as between 1988 and 1992.4 Second, traditional peacekeeping in the form of ceasefire monitoring started to be gradually complemented by peacebuilding and conflict prevention. Third, due to the high number of operations the UN was forced to more systematically develop peacekeeping doctrines and seek external partnerships. Of all IOs involved in peacekeeping operations the UN is the most experienced. It is consequently also relatively advanced in the development of peacekeeping doctrines. Since the early 1990s a number of key documents have clarified the UN’s position on peacekeeping which are listed in Box 3.1. With the Cold War ending but leaving a legacy of civil conflict ‘orphans’5 in Africa the UN rediscovered its main mission, recognising the opportunity that ‘has been regained to achieve the great objectives of the Charter – a United Nations capable of maintaining international peace and security’,6 as former Secretary-General Boutros Ghali stated. Accordingly, the number of peacekeeping operations increased sharply before 1995. The Secretary-General identified four areas in which he expected the UN to deliver: preventive diplomacy, peacemaking, peacekeeping and postconflict peace building.7 In the Agenda for Peace (1992) Boutros Ghali also referred to Article 42 of the Charter which allows the use of force to restore peace after diplomatic means have failed. The successful execution of Operation Desert Storm (1991), a UN authorised operation to free the occupied Kuwait by force has certainly contributed to a more friendly assessment of coercive measures. In this context the Agenda for Peace sees the use of force as ‘essential to the credibility of the United Nations as a guarantor of international security’.8 Years later the Brahimi (2000) report has comprehensively reassessed more assertive forms of peacekeeping, cautioning against sending peacekeepers into on-going conflicts. With the experience of failed operations the UN on average became more hesitant to engage in peace enforcement and has aimed at keeping it apart from creating peace.