UN Peacekeeping Challenges, Solutions and South Asia’s Stance

Abstract

The term peacekeeping is not included in the United Nations (UN) charter. The UN defines peacekeeping as ‘an operation involving military personnel, but without enforcement powers, established by the United Nations to help maintain or restore international peace and security in areas of conflict’ (White 1997). During the Cold War period, peacekeeping was mainly confined to Middle East, parts of Africa and other regional conflicts, which were mainly associated with de-colonisation. The major limitations are created when the states decline to offer forces for the peacekeeping operations, as is evident in the case of recent peacekeeping operations in Africa. The UN peacekeeping underwent a great expansion along with new mandates in the early part of 1990s. This resulted in a huge increase in the requirement of peacekeepers along with a rising budget and this led to a huge gap in terms of commitment and capability needed and what was provided. Greater number of resources including peacekeeping troops were required than what was actually made available. The two most egregious failures occurred in Srebrenica, Bosnia–Herzegovina, and in Rwanda. These failures have resulted in UN taking up several new measures in order to improve the peacekeeping operations. This article tries to highlight the impending governance issues of UN along with the adopted solutions to solve the issues. It also tries to highlight South Asia’s and India’s stance with respect to the UN peacekeeping operations and tries to argue that South Asian Nations should rethink its policy with respect to UN peacekeeping and adopt a smarter and more strategic approach towards its future engagement.