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Impartial and non-threatening third-party activity taken at the request or with the consent of disputants who wish, at least for the time being, to live in peace. It may be embarked upon with a view to containing a crisis, maintaining stability along a line of international division (perhaps in a buffer zone), or resolving a dispute. Such activity was periodically taken throughout most of the twentieth century. But its distinctive characteristics were not delineated and conceptualized as ‘peacekeeping’ until the late 1950s and the early 1960s. This was a result of the pacifying role of the United Nations in the Suez crisis of 1956, which led to peacekeeping being seen by some as a specifically UN province. But that was a mistake: peacekeeping can be undertaken by any international organization, group of states, or even by an individual state in which the disputants have confidence.
Typically, until the approach of the 1990s, peacekeeping was conducted by a small international force made up of battalions seconded from suitable states, or by a group of military observers made available on an individual basis by their states. Instances of current peacekeeping operations of this type include the UN Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO) on Arab-Israeli borders; the UN Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP), where it operates along the dividing line between Turkish-held northern Cyprus and the rest of the state; and the Multinational Force and Observers (MFO) – a non-UN body – in Sinai between Egypt and Israel.
Such operations are tending to become known as traditional peacekeeping, to distinguish them from the operations established in the 1990s – called, by some, second generation peacekeeping – which often included substantial civilian as well as military elements, and which sometimes were markedly more abrasive and less impartial than the earlier sort. This last type of activity, however, had by the end of the decade tended to develop into clear-cut peace enforcement. In conceptual terms this is a good thing, since as a practical matter there is no real half-way station between (traditional) peacekeeping and activity which is willing to threaten and take armed action against one of the disputants. See also chief military observer; commander; contributor state; special representative (sense 1). |
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