International Society and the United Nations Peacebuilding

Abstract

Since its first peacekeeping operation, the United Nations (UN) broadened its normative framework to provide efficient responses to the turbulent reality of countries experiencing intrastate wars. Back in the 1990s, the UN acknowledged that intrastate conflict causes are structural and socially rooted, and therefore achieving peace in collapsing states would only be possible through the strategy labelled as peacebuilding, aimed at achieving longstanding peace through the reconstruction of the state in the post-conflict phase. Based on English School theorists, this paper aims to analyze how the UN peacebuilding policies can be associated with the strengthening of the commitment of war-torn states to institutions and rules that underpins the group of states known as “international society”. To illustrate the aforementioned argument, this work consists of a case study methodology that assess the United Nations Mission in Liberia (2003-2018).