UN Peacekeeping and the Use of Force: No Escape from Hard Decisions

Abstract

The traditional or ‘classic’ understanding of peacekeeping derives largely, though not exclusively, from the experience of United Nations field operations during the Cold War. Although the term itself does not appear in the UN Charter, a general consensus concerning its essential character gradually emerged in the course of the thirteen operations that were launched between 1948 and 1987. Peacekeeping came to denote a distinctive form of third-party intervention aimed at avoiding the outbreak or resurgence of violence between warring parties. Field operations usually involved the deployment of lightly equipped military personnel whose task it was to control violence by means other than enforcement or counter-violence. To this end, the activities of peacekeepers were governed by three closely related principles: host-state consent; minimum use of force except in self-defence; and impartiality as the determinant of operational activity.

The author would like to thank Michael Pugh for very helpful comments on an earlier draft of this chapter.