Presentation For Contemporary Diplomacy
Presentation For Contemporary Diplomacy
Presentation For Contemporary Diplomacy
This presentation will address on the terms relating to Peace Operations: namely
Peace Making, Peace Keeping, Peace Building and Peace Enforcement, and is
there any overlapping or differences between all 4? First part of the presentation, I’m
going to briefly explain the terms of these peace operations and on the later part, I
will deal with the questions whether they are overlapping, or they are in actual fact
distinguish between each other.
Chapter VI of the Charter sets forth a comprehensive list of such means for the
resolution of conflict. These have been amplified in various declarations adopted by
the General Assembly, including the Manila Declaration of 1982 on the Peaceful
Settlement of International Disputes and the 1988 Declaration on the Prevention and
Removal of Disputes and Situations Which May Threaten International Peace and
Security and on the Role of the United Nations. They have also been the subject of
various resolutions of the General Assembly, including Resolution 44/21 of 15
November 1989 on enhancing international peace, security and international
cooperation in all its aspects in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations.
Peace Making
Between the tasks of seeking to prevent conflict and keeping the peace lays the
responsibility to try to bring hostile parties to agreement by peaceful means.
Peacemaking is action to bring hostile parties to agreement,
"Even if military force is authorized by the United Nations, all military operations
involve continuous negotiation, with all parties, and at many different levels.
Peace keeping
The UN Peace keeping objective is to help countries torn by conflict create the
conditions for lasting peace. The first UN peacekeeping mission was established in
1948, when the Security Council authorized the deployment of UN military observers
to the Middle East to monitor the Armistice Agreement between Israel and its Arab
neighbours. Since then, there have been a total of 63 UN peacekeeping operations
around the world.1
Peacekeeping is not expressed anywhere in the UN Charter. It was born during the
Cold War; it was used as a means to prevent the two superpowers from becoming
embroiled in localised disputes.
Less agreement can be ascertained among the member states of the United Nations
on what actually ‘peace keeping operations’. In a wider sense, the concept
designates everything, from the one man ‘presence’, through mediatory and
conciliatory missions, observer and investigatory groups, truce teams, and on up to
the formally organized peace keeping forces. In a stricter sense, peace keeping
operation concept designates those operations which are carried out by organized
armed forces of the United Nations acting, as a rule, with the co-operation of the
parties involved in the political or military conflict which caused the organization of
the operations.”
1
http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/ - Assessed on 5 th March 2010
2
Dan Cioubanu
In essence, the main function of peacekeeping is “to facilitate the transition from a
state of conflict to a state of peace,” which has earned it the appellation, “a halfway
house between peace and war.” Those missions consisted of military observers and
lightly armed troops with monitoring, reporting and confidence-building roles in
support of ceasefires and limited peace agreements. To distinguish the
peacekeeping operations from enforcement and other forms of action, Alan James
argues that it is based on 4 essential elements:-
Born at the time when the Cold War rivalries frequently paralyzed the Security
Council, UN peacekeeping goals were primarily limited to maintaining ceasefires and
stabilizing situations on the ground, so that efforts could be made at the political level
to resolve the conflict by peaceful means.
The nature of conflicts has also changed over the years. Originally developed as a
means of dealing with inter-State conflict, UN peacekeeping has been increasingly
applied to intra-State conflicts and civil wars. Although the military remain the
backbone of most peacekeeping operations, the many faces of peacekeeping now
include administrators and economists, police officers and legal experts, de-miners
and electoral observers, human rights monitors and specialists in civil affairs and
governance, humanitarian workers and experts in communications and public
information.
Peace Building
In contrast with peacekeeping, peace building or “Post Conflict peace building” (as it
was originally known) is a new concept of which the UN first took note in 1992. The
term peace building came into widespread use after 1992 when Boutrus Boutrus
Ghali the then UN Secretary General announced his Agenda for Peace. Since then
‘peace building’ has become broadly used and widely accepted part of UN missions.
Hence it could be stated that peace building has evolved from a strictly post-conflict
undertaking to a concept with a broader meaning, and the general consensus would
seem that peace building efforts should (ideally speaking) already be attempted
during the earliest indication of tension in a situation of potential conflict. Against this
background, it could be pointed out that the term `peace building' was gradually
expanded to refer to integrated approaches to address violent conflict at different
phases of the conflict cycle. As far as this article is concerned, the view is taken that
the purpose of peace building is to avoid a return to conflict and that in some cases it
may require ambitious long-term nation building efforts by international actors.
In 2009, there are 12 undergoing political and peace building mission, among others
are United Nations Political Office for Somalia (Somalia: 1995); United Nations
Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (Afghanistan: 2002); United Nations Peace
building Support Office in Guinea-Bissau (Rwanda: 1999).
Peace Enforcement
Peace enforcement could be seen often in situations where there is neither ceasefire
nor a peace to keep. Here, the term ‘peace enforcement’ has been used to describe
these operations, complying with the notion of ‘collective security’, as described in
Chapter 7, Article 42, of the UN Charter: ‘the Security Council … may take such
action by air, sea, or land forces as may be necessary to maintain or restore
international peace and security. Such action may include demonstrations, blockade,
and other operations by air, sea, or land forces of members of the United Nations’.
Peace enforcement thus takes place when the Security Council authorizes member
states to use ‘all necessary means’ to prohibit or check acts of aggression, and deal
with armed conflict or threats to peace, and not always with the consent of the
parties on the ground. Some peace-enforcement missions have been controlled by
leading states, as the USA initially did in Haiti and Somalia, or France in Rwanda.
Peace enforcement operations are authorized by the Security Council only as a last
resort, when all other peaceful means have been exhausted. Command and control
issues become more critical, as does co-ordination with a wide array of actors, and
can account for success or failure of a mission, as was learned in Somalia during
UNOSOM II.
Among the four, due to the vast diversity of peace keepings operations, and maybe
the familiarity of the word itself, peacekeeping is usually used to encompass a wide
range of mission that often include peace building and peacemaking. However, the
interrelation between all four of the peace operations is important and these concept
to be integrally inter related is significant, in order for the mission to be successful.
Peacemaking Diplomatic action to bring Requires sustained
hostile/conflicting parties to negotiate commitment
agreement