The UN Operation in the Congo, 1960–64

Abstract

If, after the ruminations and codification of the late 1950s, policy-makers at the UN or in Britain believed that they had the measure of peacekeeping, they were soon to be disillusioned. Two years after Hammarskjöld had published his careful distillation of the UNEF experience, events in the heart of Africa shook his rules and principles to the core. At the time, the unprecedented size and combustibility of the UN Operation in the Congo (ONUC)1 threatened to lift it off any scale for assessing the evolution of peacekeeping. Only three decades later, as the United Nations grappled with comparably costly and treacherous operations in Somalia and Bosnia, could a category be identified into which ONUC fell, that of a large-scale multifunctional operation deployed into an ongoing civil war. In many respects, even before first generation peacekeeping had become fully established, ONUC represented the first second-generation operation: while up to 20 000 troops laboured to stabilize the security situation, including through the occasional use of peace enforcement, around 2000 civilians provided humanitarian relief, as well as assistance with reconstruction and institution-building.