Pivots of Peace: UN Transitional Operations

Abstract

An ambitious innovation in the United Nations’ post-Cold War peace and security ‘arsenal’ has been the development of multifaceted transitional operations. Beginning with the Transition Assistance Group (UNTAG) in Namibia, a number of roughly comparable operations have been conceived in such diverse locations as Cambodia, Central America, Angola, Haiti and Mozambique. Although the scope and scale of these schemes have varied markedly, they have included efforts to assist in disarming warring parties, ‘demilitarizing’ zones of conflict, and reconstituting post-settlement defence forces; resettling refugees displaced by the conflict; improving human rights conditions and enforcing civil order; supervising or directly administering key functions of government in the transitional phase; organizing post-conflict reconstruction/development assistance initiatives; and most conspicuously, organizing or supervising democratic electoral exercises to legitimate new civilian regimes.