Introduction
United Nations peacekeeping can be referred to as
means by which the international community can encourage the establishment of
sustainable peace in place and solutions where conflict threatens or has been
recently subdued. Often, it is used to help solidity weak peace process that
emerge in post-conflict situations.
Under the United Nation charter, the
15-member United Nations Security Council is given the power to take collective
action to maintain international peace and security, and it is this
body that
usually establishes UN peacekeeping operations. The peacekeeping operations was
established in 1948 in the Middle East and is still active today since that
time, there have been 56 United nations peacekeeping operations. Of there, 43
have been established since 1988 and 14 are ongoing.
In this assignment, attempt is made to
examine United Nations peacekeeping operation in Somalia, the achievement of
UNs peacekeeping operation in Somalia
UNS peacekeeping operations in Somalia
Peacekeeping
initially developed as a means to settle inter-state conflict by deploying
unarmed or lightly military personal from a member of countries, under the Un
command, between the armed forces of former warring state. normally, a
ceasefire had been in place since 1998 to help to curb the crisis in Somalia.
The Un has been making a diplomatic efforts to address the underlying causes of
conflict in Somalia. Although the chart establishing the UN operation does not
empower it to fight fire with fire, yet, the operation has been unleasing
ceasefire on Somalia. This is because the situation of Somalia could not be
resolve with negotiations.
Consequently, there has been a
inclusive killing of both civilians and rebelt soldiers in soldiers in the
county. The situation of Somalia is perculia to that of Libya where as respond
by the presstv more than thousand civilians have lost their lives. Meanwhile,
thousand of military, police and civilian peacekeepers were charged with
treating the causes and results of wars with Somalia, rather than place like
Cambodia, El Salvador, and Mozambique. This is an intentional effort to rebuild
Somalia damaged by conflict, and to support free and fair elections and
referendum.
Hence, UN’s peacekeeping to
operation involves the task of training and restructuring, facilitating refugee
returns, monitoring human rights, supervising government structures,
demobilizing and reintegrating ex-combatants and promoting sustainable
democratic institutions and economic development of the war or crisis
devastated Somalia. Since the eruption of crisis in the area, over 80,000
troops are deployed in Un peacekeeping (source: presstv). In Somalia, neither
ceasefire, nor the consent of all the parties in conflict, had been secured.
These peacekeepers were given large mandates without the manpower to implement
them. Some of these efforts failed seriously. The most honific of the disasters
that besiege Somalia, is the killings in Srebrenica (Bosnia and Herzegovina)
and Rewanda.
This led to a period of retrenchment
and self-examination in Un peacekeeping. Regionalization seems to be an
underlying answer in 1993, in Liberia, the UN set up the first operation in
which it was collocated with a regional peacekeeping force deployed by the
economic community of West African States (ECOWAS). In 1994, the Un operation
in Georgia began working with the peacekeeping force of the common wealth of
independent states. In operations established in the second half of the 1990s,
like the Un mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina (UNMIBH) and later in Kosovo
(Serbia and Montenegro), the Un worked in confuntion with other international
organizations such as the North Atlantic treaty Organization (NATO) and European
Union.
These cooperative arrangement with
regional organizations improved in the international community’s efforts to end
conflicts in some areas, and helped restore international faith in the utility
of Un peacekeeping.
CONCLUSION
Somalia crisis has led to a considerable increase in
the number of refuges in some parts of Africa. It is in response to this
inhuman conditions of Somalia that Un sent its security organ to restore peace
in Somalia.
In a related development, in 1999
Secretary-General of African Union, Kofi Annan, asked a panel of international
experts to examine UN peace operations and identify where and when Un
peacekeeping could be most effective and how it could be improved.