It was a day like today, October 24, 1945, when the planet, which was then emerging from the bloodiest war known to mankind, the Second World War, welcomed the operation of the , with the aim of not repeating the world-scale bloodshed of the early 20th century.
Exactly 80 years later, the Organization that began with 51 member states now numbers 193, having far surpassed its proven ineffective predecessor, the League of Nations.
One of the most important functions of the UN, which are an important factor in resolving international conflicts. But what exactly are UN peacekeeping operations and how do they work?
UN peacekeeping operations
When we talk about peace operations on behalf of the UN, the so-called blue helmets, because of the characteristic color of the helmets and berets they wear. These missions take place in war-torn areas, where, usually, no other army is either willing or able to guarantee peace.
As the UN states on its website, “UN peacekeeping operations create the necessary conditions of security and support for millions of people as well as the fragile institutions created after a conflict.”
What does this mean in practice? That the blue-collar men remain in the region as guarantors of peace, as an attack on them would create a strong backlash against the military or paramilitary group that would attempt it, while at the same time enabling the war-torn regions to recover, providing them with security for the time they need to build their own well-established institutions.
Businesses in progress
on four continents, serving a total of 124,000 people. More specifically, in Kosovo, Cyprus, Lebanon, Jerusalem, the Golan region on the Israel-Syria border, the Western Sahara, Sudan, South Sudan, the Central African Republic, the Congo and the Kashmir region claimed by India and Pakistan.
We are essentially talking about areas which have been in a state of war for years, with UN peacekeeping missions playing an important role in stopping the bloodshed and, as far as possible, bringing about a basic understanding between the warring parties.
The financial costs of these operations are covered equally by the member states of the Organization, while according to a study by the University of Oxford, the international military intervention provided for by Chapter VII of the UN Charter is the most economically efficient means of preventing the recurrence of conflicts.
Past peacekeeping missions and contestation
On the other hand, however, there are not a few times when the UN missions drew fire from the international community for their failure to protect civilian populations. Case in point is the Srebrenica massacre, when, in 1995, Bosnian Serbs killed more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men, old men and young boys.
The city had been declared a safe area by UN troops two years earlier and was guarded by Dutch soldiers. When the Serbs captured it, the much smaller Dutch made no attempt to defend the city.
Many Bosniaks went to the UN camp to seek protection and several were not accepted. The Serbs separated the men, old men and boys from the women and killed them, throwing their bodies into mass graves. The massacre was Europe’s largest since the Second World War, and after reviewing the facts, the Dutch government resigned.
The future
But all this belongs to the past, as the international community hopes will soon happen with the two major conflicts of recent years, in the Gaza Strip and in Ukraine. Already in the context of negotiations to achieve peace, in both cases, the role that the UN peacekeeping forces will play the following day is being discussed. However, the size of the missions and the points they will oversee are not something simple to agree on.
A typical example is the request made by Israel last year for the abandonment of the positions of Unifil, the UN Interim Force in Lebanon. The request was then rejected, as there was an international outcry, with the Israeli forces not even hesitating to open fire, injuring two blue-collar workers from Sri Lanka.
In any case, the blue-collar workers will continue their work, although the ever-changing geopolitical environment looks set to make it more difficult in the coming years.
