From Peace-Keeping to Peace-Building: The United Nations and the Challenge of Intrastate War

Abstract

Can a self-sustaining and lasting peace be constructed in societies torn asunder by war or gross violations of human rights? This question has been one of the most pressing issues facing the United Nations (UN) since the end of the Cold War. During that time, the UN became engaged in efforts to terminate intrastate conflicts in Cambodia, Somalia, Angola, Haiti, and the former Yugoslavia, among many others. However, while traditional UN peace-keeping missions were designed to keep the peace between states, the management of intrastate conflict required keeping the peace within states. As a result, the UN began to develop a new generation of peace support activities and tasks designed to respond to the challenges of intrastate conflict: consolidating civil order and establishing the political and socioeconomic conditions for sustainable peace. In effect, the UN became engaged in building peace in war-torn societies. And so, by the year 2000 UN peace operations formally involved three principal activities: conflict prevention and peacemaking; peace-keeping; and peace-building.1 The UN, an institution devised to remove the scourge of war between states, had evolved into a primary instrument of building peace within states.KeywordsUnited NationsUnited Nations Development ProgramHuman SecurityPeace OperationBuilding PeaceThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.