Peacekeeping and Nation-Building

When you think of the United Nations today, you might envision an organization engaged in peacekeeping and nation-building operations. Many twentieth- and twenty-first-century UN missions in countries around the world have been devoted to these objectives. The ramifications of such change have been enormous and have resulted in a redefinition of the entire UN organization. Former Secretary-General Kofi Annan has written, “The most original contribution the UN has made to conflict prevention is the invention of peacekeeping.” ¹ Particularly with the decline in interstate wars and the rise in ethnic and religious civil conflict, peacekeeping missions have escalated in number and expanded in their mandates, moving beyond separating combatants and monitoring truces toward the goal of reconstructing domestic governments and civil societies along democratic lines. United Nations Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali spelled out this ambitious program of UN-sponsored democratic nation-building in his report An Agenda for Peace. He urged the United Nations to identify “at risk” states and to act early in order to avoid the collapse of state sovereignty and internal order. ² In this chapter, we discuss many of the peacekeeping and nation-building missions that have contributed to the evolution of the UN’s role in the world.