The United Nations was founded, in the words of its Charter, in order “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war”. Meeting this challenge is the most important function of the Organization, and, to a very significant degree, the yardstick by which it is judged by the peoples it exists to serve.

United Nations peace operations entail three principal activities: conflict prevention and peacemaking; peacekeeping; and peacebuilding. Long-term conflict prevention addresses the structural sources of conflict in order to build a solid foundation for peace. Peacemaking addresses conflicts in progress, attempting to bring them to a halt, using the tools of diplomacy and mediation. These activities are, by definition, mostly of a low-profile nature, and their quiet successes may even go unnoticed altogether by the public at large.

Peacebuilding is a term of more recent origin that defines UN activities to establish the foundations of peace and provide the tools for building on those foundations. Peacebuilding includes, but is not limited to, reintegrating former combatants into civilian society, security sector reform, strengthening the rule of law, improving respect for human rights, providing technical assistance for democratic development and promoting conflict resolution and reconciliation techniques.

In operational and financial terms, however, the United Nations' largest and most visible engagement in peace operations is peacekeeping. Peacekeeping, a UN endeavour born almost six decades ago, has evolved rapidly in the past 15 years qualitatively and quantitatively. In the first 40 years of the UN's history, for example, only 13 peacekeeping operations were set up. In the 20 years since then, 47 missions have been deployed.

The context and models have also changed: peacekeeping began with a primarily military model of observing ceasefires and separating combatants after inter-State wars. Today, peacekeeping has evolved and expanded into an integrated system of many elements, military, police and civilian personnel, working together to build peace in the dangerous aftermath of conflict. Since the end of the Cold War, United Nations peacekeeping has often combined with peacebuilding in complex multidimensional operations deployed into settings of intra-State conflict.

This publication provides answers to some of the most frequently asked questions about United Nations peacekeeping.