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Who Needs Peacekeepers?
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Have you ever had a disagreement with a friend or a classmate at school? Maybe it started between the two of you at lunch or in the schoolyard. At first, you yelled at each other. Later, you may even have pushed and shoved each other.
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Perhaps a few of your classmates thought you were right and took your side. Other students got involved and took the other side. Suddenly the situation escalated from a simple disagreement between two people to a major conflict.
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When tempers are flaring and people are angry, it's almost impossible to work things out unless some calmer heads step in to sort things out and reestablish order. In school, the peacekeeper may be a friend, a teacher or an older classmate; at home, it may be a sibling or a parent or relative. No matter who acts as a peacekeeper, the goal is always the same: keep the fighting parties away from each other, defuse the situation, investigate the facts and try to work out a solution to the problem that everybody can live with.
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| What is UN Peacekeeping? |
What happens in schoolyards also happens in world politics. Nations or regions or small groups of people have disagreements, yell at each other, and may send soldiers, plant landmines and, tempers flaring, often hurt and maim innocent victims who get caught in the middle. When this happens, there is no older relative or teacher or parent to calm things down.
The United Nations itself was created right after World War II, the most destructive war in history, to protect future generations from such tragedies and to prevent violence between nations. Right from the beginning, the United Nations, recognized that certain situations required impartial personnel to help cool things down. Its early leaders developed the idea of assembling a very diverse, international group of soldiers and civilians to assist in restoring and maintaining peace. In 1948, UN peacekeeping was born when the first peacekeepers were sent to the Middle East to calm down the situation there.
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UN Peacekeepers, however, do not constitute a UN army. Most peacekeepers, or 'blue helmets' as they are often called, are soldiers, but they are also police, doctors, nurses, pilots, engineers and others volunteered for peacekeeping duty by various governments and selected by the United Nations.
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When governments provide soldiers for peacekeeping duties, they retain ultimate authority over their own military forces. Peacekeeping soldiers wear their own national uniforms and do not swear allegiance to the United Nations. Generally, they are only lightly armed for self-defense. In most cases, their strongest 'weapon' is their neutrality.
In the early years of the United Nations, peacekeepers used their training and discipline mainly to monitor ceasefires, separate hostile forces and maintain buffer zones - some of the same methods that our schoolyard peacekeepers use to restore order and peace. In recent years, peacekeeping operations have changed and become more complicated. The presence of neutral peacekeeping forces still prevents potential battles between two warring sides. But nowadays, political, military and humanitarian activities are an equally important part of the mission. This means that police officers, election observers, human rights monitors and other civilians sometimes work alongside military personnel in peacekeeping operations. Some of their jobs include helping refugees return home and help provide food, water and temporary shelter for victims of the conflict. In many missions, UN peacekeepers help clear landmines, train civilian police and, in some cases, organize monitoring elections to lay the foundations for lasting
peace.
In cases where the country's civic structures have fallen apart, peacekeeping missions help in the reconstruction of essential institutions. For example, in Haiti and Bosnia and Herzegovina, peacekeepers trained police officers to be fair and to respect people's human rights. In Namibia, they supervised democratic election leading to the country's independence.
However, peacekeepers do not simply fly off to any corner of the world where a conflict breaks out. Some very complicated issues are at stake in every peacekeeping operation. Firstly, member countries of the UN are sovereign states. So an international force can not simply be sent into a country without consulting with various players, among them the government of that country as well as the international community. The consent of the government and the other parties involved in the conflict is necessary. Secondly, it is up to the 15 members of the Security Council - not the Secretary-General of the UN - to decide on the creation and scope of each mission. The 5 permanent Council members - China, France, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom, and the United States - can veto any decision on peacekeeping operations.
In order to succeed, the mission must have a clear and 'doable' purpose, along with the necessary financial and political support of UN Member States. Without this kind of support, no peacekeeping mission can be expected to accomplish its goals.
Since that first mission in 1948, 110 nations have contributed peacekeeping personnel at different times. More than 750,000 military and civilian personnel have participated in 49 operations. Sadly, more than 1,550 UN peacekeepers have died performing their duties; more than half of these deaths have been in the last six years. Keeping the peace is a dangerous business: even peacekeepers themselves are deliberately targeted in attacks.
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Why UN Peacekeeping Remains Essential
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Why is peacekeeping such an important part of the UN and the international community? Think about the schoolyard again. Every day, there is another argument or fight between classmates. In the same way, armed conflicts continue to flare up in different regions of the globe. Some of these conflicts are the result of inadequate political structures or disputed borders; others occur because different groups fan the flames of hatred, often based on ethnicity or religion. Add to this the fact that all kinds of destructive weapons are easily available and ... cheap. The result is a world in which conflict can suddenly flare up and destroy entire societies and many innocent lives.
The presence of peacekeepers in places such as Cyprus, Western Sahara, Haiti, Namibia and, most recently in the Central African Republic, has greatly limited the spread of such violence. In other places, peacekeeping missions have been less successful. UN peacekeepers can only succeed in doing their job when they are supported by the world's governments and accepted by the parties of the conflict. After all, peacekeepers are soldiers and civilians, not miracle workers.
In the next two sections, we will learn more about the changes in the nature of conflict over the past 10 years and the new challenges posed by these changes.
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Questions and Activities
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1. Vocabulary - Look at the list of words below. If you are not certain of the definition of the word, look for context clues or use a dictionary to help you find the meaning. Select five NEW words and find a synonym and an antonym for each.
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impartial - ceasfire - buffer zone - sovereign - election observer - consent - ethnicity
2. Group discussion and essay - In order for a peacekeeping mission to be successful, certain conditions must be present or the mission cannot possibly hope to achieve its goals:
* All peacekeeping missions must have the consent of the government in the country where they are sent - and usually of the other parties involved.
* The mission must have a clear mandate, political support, and proper personnel and equipment.
* There must be adequate financial and political support from UN Member States.
Make sure all the points are clearly understood. In groups, discuss these conditions, exploring both their advantages and the limitations they might impose. After the discussion, write a brief essay on this topic.
3. There are many reasons why regions and states come into conflict with each other. For example, there may be unsettled border disputes which can lead to conflict. Or one area may control a natural resource (such as water) which is essential to neighboring states. Work with a partner and brainstorm additional sources of conflict between states. Create a chart showing the various possible sources of conflict and identify the best type of peacekeeping mission to resolve them: separation of forces; civilian police monitoring, election supervision, refugee assistance and humanitarian relief, combinations of them, or others.
4. Based on the reading and your own experiences, why do you think peacekeeping can be such a dangerous task? Why would anybody attack a UN peacekeeper? What can be done to make UN peacekeeping safer?
5. Once people start fighting and using physical force, it is very difficult to stop them through peaceful means. Work with two other students and create a script or a role play which demonstrates how you could use the power of persuasion to defuse a potentially violent situation:how do you get words leading to peace to be more powerful than guns? Make certain that you include the following elements:
- the reason for the dispute
- the point of view of each of the opposing parties (at least two, but no more than three characters)
- the persuasive arguments you would use
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