Lecture Week 10 Flashcards
(13 cards)
How did UN peacekeeping developed since the cold war?
Cold War: UNSC paralyzed (veto power);
Exception: military action under chapter VII to intervene in Korean War, USSR boycotting its sessions;
Peace keeping as compromise based on:
Consent – only intervention after formal agreement from different sides of conflict (eg after deal);
Impartiality – UN not allowed to take sides in conflict or post-conflict;
Minimum use of forse – only to be used in self-defence;
End of Cold War: new momentum and new and broad human security framework (‘liberal peace’)
-> second generation peace operations tacking underlying causes as part of ‘peacebuilding’;
70+ peacekeeping missions so far.
How does peacekeeping develops in a situation of conflict?
- Preventive diplomacy (preventive diplomacy
CONFLICT - Peacemaking (good offices, negotiations, peace-enforcement, sanctions)
- Peace-keeping (observers, troops)
- Peace-building (elections, police, democracy, refugees resettlement)
How can peacekeeping be seen as promoting liberal peace?
The promotion of democracy, market-based economic reforms and a range of other institutions associated with modern states are a driving force for building peace.
-a primary cause of conflict and its continuation is the lack of a strong liberal state
-assisting failed states in acquiring these liberal functions is the solution to the problem
-peacebuilding in this sense is corrective (set things right) and a form of developmentalism (catching up)
How do fragile states turn into resilient states?
Fragile state: has weak capacity to carry out basic funtions of governing a population and its territory, and lacks the ability to develop mutually constructive and reinforcing relations with society
Statebuilding is an endogenous process to enhance capacity, institutions and legitimacy of the state driven by state-society relations
Resilient states: capable of absorbing shocks and transforming and channeling radical change or challenges while maintaining political stability and preventing violence.
Peacekeeping had a decade of failure. Mention three examples.
- Somalia (1992-1995): under the US they tried to create peace. Not succesful, killings of US troops, withdrawal. Critiques: limited impact, overemphasis on military operations, limited knowledge about context, limited humanitarian impact, human rights abses and excessive use of force.
- UNAMIR: only arriving after the end of genocide, maintaining security and stability
- UNPROFOR (Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia): mandate was to monitor cease-fire and the protection of safe areas which turned out in the genocide of Srebrenica.
What did the UN World Summit introduce in 2005 in reaction to the decade of failure?
Responsibility to protect (R2P) -> three main components:
- Every state has the Responsibility to protect its populations from four mass atrocity crimes: genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity
- The international community accepts that responsibility to encourage and assist individual state in meeting this responsibility and support the UN in establishing an early warning capabilty
- If a state is manifestly failing to protect its populations, the international community must be prepared to take appropriate collective action, in a timely and decisive manner and in accordance with the UN Charter.
How did R2P kind of failed in practice?
Since, R2P has been invoked in numerous UNSC resolutions. Libya as first and only case in which UNSC authorized military intervention -> NATO air strikes (used to trigger regime change; Russian and Chinese backlash eg veto on intervention in Syria);
Similarly, no consensus on Myanmar violence against Rohyinga, nor on Sudan;
No one is sure what it looks like and detached from reality;
R2P application guided by political interests and power dynamics;
its inconsistency undermines credibility of concept but also points at deep malaise of international system’s approach to human rights and protection.
How did the normative global order of intervention lack local agency and capacity?
The international community in the west claimed a moral and practical responsibilty to intervene and to resolve human rights crise:
Suffering, helpless Africans in need of Western Saviors’ – philantrophy connected to international order;
Intervention agenda (Agenda for peace) based on global morality and new global normative regime -> end of absolute soverignty vs right to intervene yet mainly North in South (moram imperialism;
Humanitarian world order legitimising the use of force to uphold human rights and protect people with supposed consent of those ‘being rescued’;
What are the challenges of international intervention?
Risk of contributing to conflict through neglect and exclusion of popular political agency;
Risk of empowering unaccountable political actors and structures (cost of power-sharing);
Rights as being fulfilled through external agency, displacing emancipatory and democratic possibilities;
What is Chandler’s critique on resilience?
‘the ideological power of resilience is driven by the understanding that ‘we’ cannot fix ‘their’ problems but, equally, that they cannot be expected to break out of the reproduction of these problems or ‘traps’ without external assistance’
–> external intervention thus legitimised/necessary, yet responsibility for the outcomes of intervention on the shoulders of the local actors (community, civil society) themselves;
-> resilience as legitimization of external policy interventions in the societal sphere yet also as understanding of/apologia for limits of international intervention:
How was there a shift in ambition and focus of intervention?
From creating more stable institutions as precondition for peace/transforming conflict as key focus (liberal peacebuilding), including:
Implementing comprehensive peace agreements;
building post-conflict institutions,
Assisting in organisation of elections, SSR, transitional justice
To shift in mandate – stabilization missions, which are limited in scope:
protection of civilians;
support of weak governments in expanding attempts of state authority;
Assisting to responding to threat of non-state armed groups.
The end of the peacekeeping era?
No peacekeeping mission with military personel since 2014, budget reduced and number of uniformed UN personnel decreased almost 50%.
But there are new mission (special political mission) like UN Verification Mission in Colombia, , the UN Mission to Support the Hudaydah Agreement (UNMHA – Yemen) and its cease-fire, the UN Integrated Transition Assistance Mission in Sudan (UNITAMS)
These missions are seen as less of an imposition on the sovereignty of host state; less risk of reputational harm because not mandated to protect civilans or provide security assistance in struggle against non-state armed groups or in peace process;
What could be possible explanations for the decline of international intervention?
- New regional players like the African Union
- Growing resentment against international intervention
- New agenda for peace
