UN peacekeeping missions during the past two decades: How effective have they been?

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Wars within states remain by far the most common type of violent conflict, and they absorb almost all of the peace operations that the UN has deployed since the end of the Cold War. Comprising civilian and military personnel, multidimensional missions are tasked to implement complex peace agreements in an effort to build the foundations for a self-sustaining peace following the withdrawal of intervention forces. As outlined in Boutros-Ghali’s Agenda for Peace, these multidimensional peace operations are designed to address the ‘root causes’ of violent conflict, that is, to transform political, economy and security institutions in war-torn countries.1 Consequently, peacekeepers are assigned wide-ranging tasks that may include disarming combatants, resettling refugees, organizing and monitoring elections, promoting human rights, rehabilitating the economy, building institutions, supporting security sector reform, etc. The propagated long-term solution of conflicts has pushed peace operations far beyond the narrow confines of traditional peacekeeping that consisted of interposing forces to foster trust and security between belligerents. To all intents and purposes, UN peace operations are now in the business of peacebuilding and even state-building. Partly as a result, the number of missions and personnel has expanded dramatically over the past decade, suggesting that UN peacekeeping has become a growth industry, either due to expanding normative ambitions, successful performance, or both. However, a number of recent serious setbacks have triggered a ‘paradigmatic crisis’ of UN peacekeeping.2 Not only are its resources stretched to the limit, it also faces a crisis of legitimacy as its operations are often criticized for not delivering what their mandates seem to promise. This chapter examines whether allegations of failure and a general sense of pessimism are warranted. The effectiveness of UN peace operations since the end of the Cold War will be analysed in a broad comparative perspective. This analysis is informed by the extent to which UN peacekeeping has performed in light of two major challenges: ever more complex and exigent environments on the one hand and increasingly ambitious objectives on the other. Thus, interrogating the effectiveness of peacekeeping necessarily eludes clear-cut answers, not least becauseoutputs (mandate implementation) and outcomes (peace) are only two dimensions of peacekeeping performance. A balanced assessment needs to analyse effectiveness through the lens of organizational performance and learning; that is, whether the UN and its peace operations have increased their ability to keep the peace. This chapter therefore considers internal processes and constraints as important factors that influence organizational behaviour and performance, notably the growing ambitions and objectives of the UN peacekeeping machinery. As a consequence, organizational performance and effectiveness are contextualized by looking at the conditions under which peacekeeping is operating. The chapter is structured as follows: after briefly summarizing the major trends in UN peacekeeping over the past decade, I first discuss methodologies for evaluating peacekeeping as well as the empirical results that academic studies have produced. This is followed by explanations of organizational performance, including a discussion of conceptual and political issues revolving around contemporary peace operations. The unprecedented explosion of qualitative ambitions, laid down in mandates by the UN Security Council, receives particular attention. The third and final section of the chapter discusses the promise and limits of peacekeeping partnerships by looking specifically at the European Union and its cooperation with the UN in the field of peacekeeping.