Abstract

MACQUEEN, Norrie. The seventy-year journey of United Nations peacekeeping. Relações Internacionais [online]. 2019, n.61, pp.123-137. ISSN 1645-9199.  https://doi.org/10.23906/ri2019.61a09.

The 70th anniversary of United Nations peace operations has just passed. Over the years the nature of peacekeeping has developed in parallel with shifts in international politics. During the cold war years, peacekeeping was a limited ‘minimalist' activity (usually restricted to military observation and interposition). At that time UN peace operations were mainly carried out by European and other developed ‘middle powers'. With the end of polarised cold war system in the 1990s, however, the situation changed. Peace operations became much more ‘multifunctional', integrating economic and political development tasks with military ones. UN peacekeepers have increasingly been supplied by countries of the global South. The proportion of women peacekeepers has grown. Seventy years on, UN peace operations face many challenges, both in the field and due to the state of global politics. But peacekeeping is now a fundamental tool of international relations and is likely to remain so.

Keywords : peace operations; United Nations; conflict resolution; armed forces.

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