INTRODUCTION

While most soldiers are intimately familiar with the purpose and aims of war, they tend to be infinitely more confused as to the purpose of peace operations. The concept of peace operations derives from the United Nations Charter, which has been signed by more than 180 independent states since it was drafted in 1945. Article 1 (1) clearly states that the primary purpose of the UN is "to maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace." This being said, there is no explicit reference in the UN Charter to either peacekeeping or peace support operations.

In the absence of any reference to peacekeeping per se, the concepts and principles associated with contemporary peace operations have emerged over the last fifty years as a product of, rather than a precept to the conduct of such operations. As a result, any dramatic change in the international security environment is sure to place strain on their validity and utility. The aim of this article is to sketch a broad outline of the historical evolution of contemporary peace operations, from the perspective of their underlying (or perhaps undermining) principles.

THE CHARTER FRAMEWORK

Any discourse on the history of UN peace operations must proceed from the assumption that these cannot be contradictory to the purpose, principles and provisions of the United Nations, as articulated in the Charter. Article 24 confers upon the Security Council primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security, and directs it to act in accordance with the Purposes and Principles of the UN, according to the specific powers granted in Chapters Vl, Vll, VIII, and Xll. While Chapter XII deals with the defunct International Trusteeship System, Chapters VI, VII and VIII still provide the basic frame of reference for Security Council action.

Chapter VIII deals with "regional arrangements", Article 52 (1) stating that, "[n]othing in the present Charter precludes the existence of regional arrangements or agencies for dealing with such matters relating to the maintenance of international peace and security as are appropriate for regional action, provided that such arrangements or agencies and their activities are consistent with the Purposes and Principles of the United Nations." The Charter provides no precise definition of regional arrangements and agencies, but Chapter VIII does indicate that the UN has never envisaged having a monopoly on collective security efforts, which might include regional military alliances and multilateral military interventions. Article 53 refers to enforcement action by regional bodies, but requires that "... no enforcement action shall be taken under regional arrangement or by regional agencies without the authorisation of the Security Council ..."

The UN Charter was drafted with a view to regulate relationships among its members; i.e. independent states. It granted all members equal status, and assumed that states would continue to be the primary and sovereign actors in international relations. It does not contain provisions whereby "the Security Council or General Assembly may relate to non-state agencies such as liberation movements, communal minorities, or political parties".2 Indeed, Article 2 (7) states that, "[n]othing contained in the present Charter shall authorise the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state or shall require the Members to submit such matters to settlement under the present Charter; but this principle shall not prejudice the application of enforcement measures under Chapter Vll."

Essentially, this means that no invitation or consent is needed for UN intervention when the internal situation in any state is designated by the Security Council as a threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression. Neither, according to Chapter VII, is consent needed for action against a state which, according to the Security Council is an aggressor, has breached the peace, or constitutes a threat to the peace.

Chapter VII deals with 'Action With Respect to Threats to the Peace, Breaches of the Peace, and Acts of Aggression'. It empowers the Security Council to decide on measures to be taken to restore peace (implicitly, once a dispute has degenerated into armed conflict and has been identified by the Security Council as a threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression). Chapter Vll is essentially coercive. Through Chapter Vll the UN Security Council is empowered to investigate alleged violations and then determine measures to be taken against the states concerned. These measures can include political and economic pressure as well as the use of force (Article 42). Importantly, Chapter VII requires all Members of the UN to "make available to the Security Council, on its call and in accordance with a special agreement or agreements, armed forces, assistance, and facilities ... necessary for the purpose of maintaining International peace and security."

The will of the Security Council to use its full powers under Chapter VII will obviously depend on the means at its disposal. However, the military forces envisaged in Chapter VII never materialised. In April 1947, in accordance with Articles 43-48 of the Charter, the UN's Military Staff Committee published a report on the question of contributions of armed forces to the Security Council. It reflected significant disagreements among the Permanent Five about the size and composition of national contributions, and the whole endeavour was abandoned. This was part of a broader failure to implement the provisions of Chapter VII which had appeared to provide an ambitious concept for collective security.3 Thus the majority of the thirteen UN peacekeeping operations and observer missions conducted between 1948 and 1988, involving primarily military personnel and units (albeit unarmed or lightly armed), were mandated under Chapter VI of the Charter.

Chapter VI of the UN Charter deals with 'The Pacific Settlement of Disputes'. It empowers the Security Council to: "investigate any dispute, or any situation which might lead to international friction or give rise to a dispute, in order to determine whether the continuance of the dispute or situation is likely to endanger the maintenance of international peace and security."

It emphasises the primacy of negotiation, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement or any other means that would be preferred by parties to a conflict as major mechanisms for the peaceful settlement of disputes. It also empowers the Security Council to recommend appropriate procedures or methods of adjustment of such disputes.

Chapter VI makes no provision for unsolicited intervention. Apart from empowering the Security Council to determine which disputes, if allowed to continue unresolved, would endanger peace and security, and to recommend 'appropriate' measures to resolve such disputes, Chapter VI provides a weak and vague basis for the concept and conduct of peace support operations. It does, however, suggest that keeping the peace will require negotiation, mediation, conciliation and arbitration. Under Chapter VI, UN peacekeeping operations can only be authorised with the consent of the parties directly concerned. There is nothing in Chapter VI that suggests a role for the military in the maintenance or restoration of peace. Nor is there anything that precludes the use of armed forces (or armed force) to adjust disputes, where deemed appropriate. The most fundamental distinction that can therefore be made between actions in accordance with Chapter VI and Chapter VII, is that Chapter VI actions require the consent of disputing parties (implicitly, the consent of one or more states), while Chapter VII actions require the resolve of the Security Council and appropriate means for implementation.

In the absence of sufficient resolve and adequate means, most peace operations were established through reference to Chapter VI of the Charter. Thus, peace support operations were largely limited to peacekeeping, or the interposition of UN forces to monitor and observe cease-fires between the armies of consenting states. This does not imply that Chapter VI provides the ideal framework for peace operations. Many conflicts, particularly those potentially involving East-West confrontation, have gone unresolved, and a number have been addressed outside the UN framework. Nevertheless, a number of concepts or 'principles' were established to guide 'Chapter VI' operations, primarily to assist in the preparation of military forces for operations which were very different from war, and which therefore required a significantly different attitudinal and doctrinal basis.

'CLASSICAL' PEACEKEEPING (1948-1988)

The first UN peacekeeping operations were military observer missions, generally assigned to monitor or supervise cease-fires, truces, or armistice agreements in conflict areas. UN observers were first deployed in Palestine as the UN Truce Supervision Organisation (UNTSO), at the conclusion of the first Arab-Israeli war in June 1948. However, peacekeeping became commonly associated with the UN after it established its first peacekeeping force in response to the Suez crisis of 1956. When Egyptian President Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal, Britain, France and Israel joined in an attack on Egypt. The attack was condemned by both the US and the USSR, and the General Assembly created the UN Emergency Force (UNEF), which was interpositioned between the belligerent forces, and which stayed there until 1967. The term 'peacekeeping' was formalised in 1965, when the UN General Assembly established the 'Special Committee on Peacekeeping Operations'.

Cold War politics prevented the Security Council from fully developing its peacekeeping potential. The UN Charter had envisaged unanimous purpose prevailing in the event of having to keep and even enforce peace. Instead, the use of the veto by permanent members in the Security Council blocked many efforts to use the Security Council as an effective instrument for peacekeeping. Due to the specific nature of the Cold War, UN peacekeeping activities were mainly focused upon dispatching troops and observer missions to discourage the involvement of major powers in civil wars and wars aimed at achieving independence from former colonial empires.

Of the thirteen UN peacekeeping operations conducted between 1948 and 1988, all but one were concerned with conflict that had arisen following European decolonisation (no new missions were launched between 1979 and May 1988). Moreover, all were conducted in developing countries, and most took place in the Middle East. Operations were staffed predominantly by military personnel. Troop contributions for the execution of operations came from a limited number of countries (26), the major contributors being medium-sized developed states, such as Australia, Austria, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, New Zealand, Norway and Sweden.

The traditional tasks of UN peacekeeping operations as they evolved during the first four decades of the UN's existence, included monitoring and enforcing cease-fires; observing frontier lines; and interposing between belligerents. These tasks were generally carried out on the basis of three key principles: the consent of the parties; the impartiality of the peace keepers; and the non-use of force in most circumstances.

Consent

Consent means the reaching of agreement, the granting of permission or approval. Permission or approval is granted to an actor or actors by an actor or actors. Classical peacekeeping operations could only be set up in areas of conflict with the consent of the parties directly concerned. It was based on the fundamental assumption that these parties, in accepting intervention in the form of a UN peacekeeping operation, would commit themselves to co-operation with the UN and to honouring this commitment. The actors concerned were mostly de jure governments and the UN. It was thought that any problem between the peace keepers and one or more of the parties could be resolved peacefully by means of negotiation and persuasion.4 The principle of consent has also applied to relations between the UN and the troop contributing countries that have provided military personnel for UN operations. Governments are extremely reluctant to volunteer the services of their soldiers if this involves deployment in a situation where they would have to kill or be killed.5

Consent was viewed as a more or less absolute concept, something one had or did not have. When it was granted, belligerent parties agreed to the deployment and presence of peace keepers, to their freedom of movement in order to fulfil the mandate agreed upon, and to the general terms of a cease-fire arrangement. However, there was general recognition of the fact that ongoing consent, once granted, had to be nurtured at the operational and tactical levels. This was done mainly through application of the principles of impartiality and the non-use of force.

Impartiality

According to Tharoor:6 "[i]mpartiality is the oxygen of peacekeeping: the only way peace keepers can work is by being trusted by both sides, being clear and transparent in their dealings, and keeping lines of communication open. The moment they lose this trust, the moment they are seen by one side as the 'enemy', they become part of the problem they were sent to solve."

Crossing the divide between impartiality and partiality at the political-strategic level entails the deliberate positing of an enemy, and the transformation of an operation from peace support to outright enforcement, or war. Even at the operational and tactical levels, impartiality has been regarded as an absolute principle. The impartiality of a peace support force has been considered essential to retain the trust and confidence of the parties in dispute and of the host government, and ultimately to the very survival of an outgunned and outnumbered peacekeeping force.

As justice should be seen to be done, so too should peace support forces be seen to be acting impartially. Impartiality was therefore sustained not only by appropriate actions, but also through the effective communication of those actions to all concerned parties. The practice of transparency therefore bolstered the principle of impartiality, by making the parties involved fully aware of the peacekeeping force's mission and concept of operations. This practice also led to a ban on covert intelligence gathering by peace keepers, and an acceptance of all the operational limitations inherent therein.

The principle of impartiality was enhanced by the practice of fielding broadly representative multinational forces for operations under the UN flag. In the first decades of UN peacekeeping operations, the need for impartiality and disinterestedness was part of the reason for not using troops from certain countries. In particular, the UN avoided for the most part using contingents from the permanent five members of the Security Council (especially China and the two superpowers) and forces from neighbouring powers. The merits of these practices were obvious: local conflicts were insulated from Cold War rivalry and regional hegemony. The weaknesses were equally obvious. UN forces sometimes either lacked the authority and strength that a superpower presence could have provided or they lacked the local knowledge, interest and staying power that forces from a neighbouring power might have had.7

Non-Use (or Reactive Use) of Force

The non-use of force has guided UN peacekeeping since its inception. Ever since the first peacekeeping operation (UNTSO), military observers have been deployed unarmed, the reasoning being that possible antagonists would be less likely to use their arms against unarmed personnel. This rule was broken only in 1989, when UNTAG observers were authorised to carry side arms for self-protection against wild animals in certain parts of Namibia.8 The principle of non-use of force except in self-defence was also firmly established when the first UN peacekeeping force (UNEF I) was set up in November 1956. According to UN Secretary-General of the time, Dag Hammarskjöld, "[a] reasonable definition seems to have been established in the case of UNEF, where the rule is applied that men engaged in the operation may never take the initiative in the use of armed force, but are entitled to respond with force to an attack with arms, including attempts to make them withdraw from positions which they occupy under orders from the Commander, acting under the authority of the Assembly and within the scope of its resolutions."9

Peace operations were thus based on the premise that peaceful methods would generally be used to achieve the mission's goal. Any use of force would have to be justified and carefully controlled, as unnecessary or irrational use of force would undermine the acceptability of the force and lead to an escalation of violence in the area of operation. The principle of non-use of force except in self-defence was thus based on practical as well as idealistic considerations. The dispersion of forces and their lightly armed nature has meant that UN peace keepers have been highly vulnerable to reprisal in the event that they initiate forceful action.

Since 1973, self-defence had however been deemed to include situations in which peace keepers were being prevented by armed persons from fulfilling their mandate. The second UN Emergency Force was established in that year to contain the Yom Kippur War when it escalated to the extent that the two superpowers were nearly drawn into direct military confrontation. In his report which set up the second UN Emergency Force in the Suez Canal and Sinai areas in October 1973, UN Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim modified some of Hammarskjöld's principles, stating that, "[t]he Force will be provided with weapons of a defensive character only. It shall not use force except in self-defence. Self-defence would include resistance to attempts by forceful means to prevent it from discharging its duties under the mandate of the Security Council."10

Although this was a wider definition of 'self-defence', it did not lead to a general pattern of more forceful response when UN forces were prevented by armed persons from fulfilling their mandate; nor did it lead to a practice of deploying more appropriate force and armament levels for the role implied by Dr Waldheim. For example, commanders remained reluctant to use their prerogative to force passage when denied freedom of movement by armed elements. According to Goulding, "this reluctance was perhaps based on sound calculations related to the impartiality, to their reliance on the continued co-operation of the parties and to the fact that their force's level of armament was based on the assumption that the parties would comply with their commitments."11

The principle of non-use of force is closely linked to that of consent. The assumption has been that parties to a conflict would be more likely to accept a UN operation if the latter had neither offensive intent nor capability, and would under no conceivable circumstances pose a threat to them. Moreover, with the consent of all parties to UN involvement, differences between peace keepers and the parties involved could be resolved amicably, and the use of force would be both unnecessary and counterproductive, in the sense that the use of force against a particular party would abrogate the principle of impartiality.12 Impartiality, in turn, would bolster the credibility and legitimacy of the UN force, thus further reducing the likelihood of a need to use force in order to accomplish mission objectives.

THE EFFICACY OF 'CLASSICAL' PEACEKEEPING

Despite the relative simplicity of operations, a number of problems that continued to plague contemporary peacekeeping, emerged during the 'classical' peacekeeping era. For example, the weakness of depending upon the consent of the host state was cruelly exposed by the expulsion of UNEF 1 from Egypt in 1967 and the subsequent outbreak of war between Israel and a number of Arab states. Sometimes the performance of the original mandate led to additional tasks that did not accord with the 'golden' principles and practices of peacekeeping.

In the Congo, the tasks of ONUC came to include assisting in the maintenance of government and public order and the use of military force to achieve these ends against a variety of challenges. The Security Council had to authorise the use of force beyond self-defence on two occasions: in February 1961, following the death of Prime Minister Lumumba, to prevent civil war; and in November 1961, to expel foreign mercenaries working for the Katangese secessionists.13 This early hybrid of peacekeeping and enforcement succeeded, but at a huge price. In Cyprus and in Lebanon, however, the presence of UN peacekeeping forces could not prevent breakdowns of order, including major foreign invasions and seizure of territory.

UNFICYP was established in March 1964 to stop the fighting between Greek and Turkish communities, under the principle of non-use of force. In August 1964, when the Greek Cypriot-controlled National Guard attacked the Turkish-Cypriot armed faction in the Tylliria area, and Turkish air assets were used to bomb Greek Cypriot positions in retaliation, UNFICYP could do nothing to stop the carnage. Ten years later, on 15 July 1974, the National Guard staged a coup in an attempt to unite Cyprus with Greece. Five days later, the Turkish army invaded Cyprus and occupied the entire northern part of the island. UNFICYP had neither the mandate nor the means to deal with such large-scale military hostilities.14

The UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), was established in 1978 to confirm the withdrawal of Israeli forces, to restore international peace and security in southern Lebanon, and to assist the Lebanese government in re-establishing effective authority. Adherence to the principle of non-use of force gave rise to serious problems. UNIFIL had to deal with various internal factions, often more heavily armed than themselves. It operated in a semi-war zone without the usual safeguards deriving from the consent and co-operation of the governments directly concerned. In 1982, despite the presence of UNIFIL, Israel once again invaded Lebanon with the intent of eliminating the PLO as a political and military force.15

When an internationally brokered agreement was finally reached in 1983, the US Marines were part of the peacekeeping force which was deployed in Beirut to facilitate the withdrawal of belligerent forces. A few weeks after the successful completion of this operation, the Lebanese Government requested the assistance of the same Marines to help restore disintegrating internal order, in a situation where the Government's legitimacy had declined to little more than any other competing faction. The second Marine deployment obviously did not enjoy the consent of all major parties, and they thus became party to the conflict through de facto alliance with the Government. Deployed in a manner consistent with consensual peacekeeping, the Marine's command post became an easy target for anti-government factions who killed more than 200 Marines in a truck-bomb attack.16

Nevertheless, the achievements of UN peacekeeping from 1948 to 1988 included the effective freezing (although not resolution) of certain conflicts; some reduction of the risk or extent of competitive interventions by neighbouring or major powers; and the isolation of some local conflicts from the East-West struggle, so that the local conflicts did not exacerbate the Cold War.17 In short, some wars were prevented from spreading and some missions were effectively accomplished. However, by rigorously applying the UNEF II principles, operations lacking the necessary criteria for success were removed from the Security Council's agenda.18

UN peacekeeping operations were most effective when conflicts involved legitimate governments that decided to settle their disputes by peaceful means because of war-weariness and the conviction that a continuation of hostilities would no longer serve their best interests. Traditional peacekeeping has been least problematic when parties have agreed to end their conflicts and only need the UN to help them keep their word, where the consent and co-operation of the parties can be assumed and the impartiality of the peace keepers is not challenged, where there are low risks and little or no need to use force, where the tasks of the peace keeper are limited to those compatible with basic military skills, and where the limited resources of the UN are adequate for the task at hand.19 These conditions have not prevailed in a number of situations in which the UN has been required to keep the peace in the post-Cold War environment.

POST-1988 OPERATIONS: CHANGED CONDITIONS AND NEW MISSIONS

As outlined above, peacekeeping operations were a necessary invention of the Cold War, initiated during a time when the Charter provisions for dealing with inter-state conflict (Chapter VII) were frozen by the threat of superpower confrontation and global annihilation. The termination of the Cold War made it possible to implement the ideal of collective security through concerted Chapter VII enforcement action. Operation Desert Storm succeeded in reversing Iraqi aggression against Kuwait. It also opened the way to negotiated settlements to end proxy Cold War conflicts in developing countries, where the UN was invited to guide former adversaries to political settlements based on compromise, rather than the more limited goals of stabilising cease-fires, which were typical of classical peace operations. UN peacekeeping thus embarked on a new mission: helping to end internal conflicts, where the peace process started with a cease-fire determined by negotiated agreements, and UN peace keepers deployed in the affected areas with the consent of the involved parties reflected in these agreements.20

The arena of peacekeeping has expanded far beyond the boundaries of classical peacekeeping. Since 1988, peace operations have become a global activity. The majority of operations have been in Africa, rather than the Middle East, while Asia, the Americas and Europe have also become host to peace keepers, as the Security Council has had to react not only to requests for assistance in ending proxy wars of the Cold War era, but also to international demands to intervene in a number of 'complex emergencies'. The Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs has defined a complex emergency as "a large-scale emergency caused wholly or partly by an armed conflict, which tends to combine an internal or international conflict with serious human rights violations and large-scale suffering among the threatened civilian population, resulting in large numbers of displaced persons."21 However defined, complex emergencies wreck and destroy national, government, social, civil and trading structures within a country. This new 'environment' is marked by an increasing number of intertwining crises which exacerbate each other, multiplying their disastrous effects.

An unprecedented degree of agreement among the Permanent Five in the Security Council has led to the establishment of an equally unprecedented number of peacekeeping operations which have borne little or no resemblance in size, complexity and function to those of the 'classical' era. From 1948 to 1978, thirteen peacekeeping and observer forces were set up. Since May 1988, a further 22 forces have been created. Although the number of UN peace keepers has dropped from 78 000 in September 1994 to 62 500 in 1995, and only 28 000 in April 1996, the number of missions has stayed at about sixteen. With 6 500 peace keepers in Angola, UNAVEM III is presently the largest UN mission, though it is small compared to the 46 000 who were in the former Yugoslavia during 1995.22

Not only has the number of UN peacekeeping missions expanded, but so too has the number of participating nations, or troop contributing countries. During the classical peacekeeping era, troop contributors were mostly medium-sized developed states, such as Australia, Austria, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, New Zealand, Norway and Sweden, and a few of the larger developing states (India and Pakistan). Also prominent were a number of smaller developing states, notably Fiji, Ghana, Nepal and Senegal. Before UNTAG was deployed in 1989, only 26 countries were involved in UN peacekeeping, but by the end of 1994, 76 countries had become involved.23 Since 1992, peacekeeping operations have included the participation of military units from all five permanent members of the Security Council and some neighbouring or near neighbouring states (such as Thailand and China in Cambodia). They have also involved the participation of powers that hitherto have been constitutionally prevented from sending their armed forces into action abroad (such as Japan and Germany).24

The roles of both peace keepers and international relief organisations have also become far wider than ever before, creating unprecedented problems of management and co-ordination at the international level. Not only have the resources and organisational capacity of the UN been stretched to the limit, but also its conceptual capacity to deal with peace operations in the new environment.

A central difficulty in the expansion of UN peacekeeping tasks has been the blurring of the distinction between peacekeeping and coercive action, which is linked to a tendency to downgrade the requirement of the consent of the parties to a conflict as a precondition for setting up and maintaining a peacekeeping operation. There is thus a much more interventionist element in contemporary peacekeeping, which is at the heart of the conceptual dilemmas surrounding UN peace operations.25 For purposes of analysis, a broad (but not definitive or rigid) distinction may be made between 'second' and 'third' generation peace operations.

Second generation multifunctional operations are associated with the ending of proxy Cold War conflicts through negotiated settlements, in which the UN or other multinational organisations guided the adversaries to political settlements based on compromise (Namibia, Cambodia, El Salvador, Mozambique and Angola). The UN became involved in ending internal conflicts through multi-dimensional processes which included activities such as:

the separation of combatants;


the disarmament of irregular forces;


the demobilisation and transformation of regular and irregular forces into a unified army;


the establishment of new policing systems; and


the monitoring of elections for new governments.26

These operations have brought Namibia to independence, transformed society and politics in Cambodia and El Salvador, and provided a basis for the reconstruction of Mozambique, demonstrating the utility of a broader concept of peacekeeping – a concept which combines military functions with a broad variety of largely civilian undertakings to engineer change and fulfil the objectives of the operations. With the notable exception of Angola, these new functions have been reflected in the terms of a comprehensive settlement that all parties to a conflict have wished the UN to help implement, and none of them have involved a major threat to the UN preference for the non-use of force.27

On the other hand, third generation or 'middle ground' operations have been precipitated by the resurgence of more primordial animosities which have been suppressed, rather than addressed, during the Cold War freeze, and which have led to conflicts marked by the most despicable abuses of human rights in the midst of anarchic conditions. 'Peacekeeping' operations have been launched where there is no peace to keep, but where there is a strong international desire to support humanitarian assistance efforts, while attempts are made to find a political solution to the conflict. The efforts of the peacekeeping mission are thus focused on the more limited objective of providing humanitarian relief, rather than brokering a comprehensive settlement. Moreover, consent may be absent because authority has collapsed, or meaningless because of a proliferation of groups claiming authority; agreements are non-existent or worthless, and international law and conventions are openly flouted. The two most salient (and oft-cited) examples of this type of operation are those conducted in Somalia and the former Yugoslavia, while the Rwandan mission is recognised as the most obvious failure.28 It is this latter type of operation that has placed the most strain on the traditional concept and challenged the established principles of peacekeeping.

NEW CHALLENGES AND OLD PRINCIPLES

Consent

Although widely regarded as the fundamental and key differential between peacekeeping and peace enforcement, it has become obvious that consent is not an absolute concept, that there are both quantitative and qualitative dimensions to the nature of consent. Agreement may be reached on a wide variety of issues, or on one specific issue. The concept of consent therefore has a variable scope, both in terms of the number and status of parties to an agreement, and to the content of that agreement. The intensity of consent will also vary from situation to situation. Agreements may be reached on issues of fundamental importance to the actors involved, or on more peripheral matters. There is also a temporal dimension to the concept of consent. What one is willing to agree to at a specific time and under a specific set of circumstances may vary with the passage of time and the changing of circumstances. The issue of clarity is also important. Once reached, agreements are also notoriously vulnerable to a variety of interpretations. Ultimately, consent is something which is given, and thus may also be withdrawn. The likelihood of consent being withdrawn, or an agreement being broken will generally be minimised by the threat or imposition of effective sanctions against the actor or actors who abrogate the agreement.

The relative nature of consent is highlighted in the new peacekeeping environment, which has fundamentally altered the basis and quality of 'consent' as a peacekeeping principle. It is impossible to rely on the consent of legitimate and authoritative parties in a 'collapsed state' such as Somalia or Cambodia, where:

there are no functional government structures;



few of the factional leaders who participate in negotiations have any concept of statesmanship or the rule of law;



the interests and survival needs of factional leaders are beyond the scope of the peace process;



armed elements of political factions become geographically and politically isolated; and



splinter-groups form within existing political factions.29

At the political level, two post-Cold War UN peacekeeping forces – UNPROFOR and UNOSOM II – have been largely set up in the framework of Chapter VII of the UN Charter, without relying on the consent of the parties to the conflict to the same extent as earlier cases. UN Security Council Resolution 743 of 21 February 1992, authorising the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) in the former Yugoslavia, contained some elements of consent. However, it specified that the Council was acting under the Security Council's responsibility 'for the maintenance of international peace and security' – a coded reference to Chapter Vll of the UN Charter. This resolution established UNPROFOR for an indefinite term of peacekeeping at the discretion of the Security Council, which ignored the temporal nature of consent. Although the operation had begun with a degree of consent of the parties to the conflict, it was implicitly authorised to continue even without that consent.30

The UN Security Council explicitly referred to its powers under Chapter Vll of the UN Charter when it decided to establish UNOSOM II in May 1993 to take over responsibilities and personnel from UNITAF in Somalia, where there was no functioning government to give or refuse consent. Not only does the establishing resolution explicitly refer to Chapter Vll of the UN Charter, but it also clearly leaves room for a greater use of force than was typical for UN peacekeeping operations.31

At the operational and tactical levels, it has also been recognised that consent is unlikely ever to be more than partial, and may amount to nothing more than tolerance of presence. As Charles Dobbie has observed, "[c]onsent is something that the peace keeper can expect to have bits of, from certain people, in certain places, for certain things, for certain periods of time. Consent at the tactical (field operations) level will derive from local events and prevailing popular opinion. It will be subject to frequent change and its boundary will therefore be mobile and poorly defined. At the operational (i.e. theatre) level, consent will devolve largely from formal agreements and that boundary will consequently be relatively clear-cut and easier to discern."32

Where 'classical' peace operations encountered lack of consent, as in the Congo and Lebanon, order was restored through renewed negotiations at the political level, above the operational level of UN forces. Now, burdened with a variety of tasks which may not meet with consent at the local level, Security Council resolutions can be blocked or even overturned by relatively small recalcitrant factions, despite enjoying the overwhelming support of the international community, involved governments and the majority of local parties.33

Recognising that consent can no longer be postulated and adhered to in practice as an absolute requirement, Berdal34 has suggested that the issue of consent should be resolved on a situation-specific basis. For example, if the military threat posed by the non-co-operation of parties is limited to small-scale resistance, banditry and looting, and the principal parties to a conflict remain committed to an agreement, a peacekeeping force may be empowered to confront it. This implies a type of 'policing function', and should be clearly distinguished from an enforcement action that does not rest on the consent of key parties, and that involves military operations aimed at forcibly imposing a solution. Even with regard to 'policing' activities, UN forces should remain geared towards obtaining a maximum of local support and consent.

Impartiality

In intra-state conflicts, the impartiality of peacekeeping forces has not been recognised by all parties to the conflict. Military interposition in the strategic sense has become impossible, and at lower levels complicated by the denial of the right to freedom of movement, a key prerequisite for effective 'classical' peacekeeping. Together with frequent cease-fire violations, the absence of clearly demarcated front-lines and legitimate authorities in the area of operations, these factors have exposed UN peace keepers to a much higher degree of physical risk than ever before.35 Yet, the continued vulnerability of peace keepers has meant that the concept of impartiality has been clung to as an absolute principle of peacekeeping.

Impartiality simply means an absence of bias. It entails both non-partisanship and the concept of fair-play. Like consent, however, there are actors involved. The question that has emerged during new generation peacekeeping is who should be impartial towards whom or what? Should a peacekeeping force be impartial towards the belligerent parties, the innocent victims of their aggression, or to the international community whose will is expressed in their mandate? Is there not also a notion of reciprocity in the concept of fair play? In other words, is it possible to remain non-partisan towards players who flaunt the rules and are guilty of foul-play?

Because of the notion of interrelatedness between the three key principles of peacekeeping, firmly established during the classical era, these questions have not been answered at a conceptual level, but rather in relation to the notions of consent and (especially) the non-use of force. It seems possible for peacekeeping forces to use force impartially at the operational and tactical levels in self-defence or in order to defend the implementation of a mandate. This implies, however, that transgressors will be dealt the same 'punishment', irrespective of their political/group affiliation, by all the component contingents of a peace support force. This idea has been extremely difficult to translate into practice, due to doctrinal disparity among troop contributing countries, uneven levels of training and equipment, and especially because of the lack of a clear concept and instrument for the impartial use of force.

The principle of impartiality has therefore survived largely intact in its original, simplified guise of peace keepers 'not prejudicing the rights and aspirations of any side', which, of course, means not using force against any belligerent party except in self-defence. However, consistent application of the latter principle has been extremely difficult to achieve in the new peacekeeping environment.

Non-Use of Force

In both Bosnia-Herzegovina and Somalia, there was a widely perceived need for peacekeeping to have 'teeth'. The international community expressed indignation and revulsion over situations in which parties to a conflict could, at will, stop the distribution of aid, prevent the rotation of UN peacekeeping troops, bombard cities, maintain cruel sieges and commit war crimes: all with UN forces looking on and seemingly powerless to act.36 However, these events have also exposed one of the fundamental difficulties of third-generation peacekeeping. In Bosnia-Herzegovina, it became increasingly clear that only force could meaningfully protect territory in the midst of ongoing armed conflict. UN peace keepers were forced to call in air strikes on the very people among whom they were deployed, and upon whose co-operation their own lives depended. The safe areas and their inhabitants, including UN personnel, could only be fed and supplied through Serb territory and with Serb consent, yet there was international pressure to punish the Serbs for every transgression, risking the termination of Serb co-operation. Tharoor37 has put the dilemma in a nutshell: "It is no easy task to make war and peace with the same people on the same territory at the same time."

Nevertheless, an increased willingness to use force in support of UN operations also became apparent in certain passages of An Agenda for Peace. Enforcement was, however, presented as an activity that would possibly require separate and distinct forces: "Cease fires have often been agreed to but not complied with, and the United Nations has sometimes been called upon to send forces to restore and maintain the cease-fire. This task can on occasion exceed the mission of peace-keeping forces and the expectations of peacekeeping force contributors. I recommend that the Council consider the utilisation of peace-enforcement units in clearly defined circumstances and with their terms of reference specified in advance."38

While the Secretary-General coined the phrase 'peace enforcement', he was to admit that he did not provide a universally-accepted definition or concept for its implementation.39 UN 'peace enforcement units' have not been created in practice, but their envisaged functions have been conducted in an ad hoc manner by:

UN peacekeeping forces themselves (as with certain aspects of the operations in the former Yugoslavia and Somalia);



national forces (South African actions in Namibia and certain US actions in Somalia); and



regional alliances (as in NATO enforcement of the air exclusion zone over Bosnia and in the Sarajevo exclusion zone, and latterly IFOR).

Where force has been used in defence of mandates, it has been without a clear conceptual framework and appropriately configured instruments. Indeed, the durability of the so-called UNEF II rules and principles was confirmed in 1993 by the Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs, Marrack Goulding, who reiterated that peace support operations should be:

organised and authorised by the United Nations;


be deployed with the consent of the parties concerned;


act impartially;


be provided with sufficient military assets and finances by member states; and


only use force in self defence.40

Despite the lessons of Somalia, Bosnia and Rwanda, these sentiments were echoed by the UN Special Committee on Peacekeeping Operations in June 1995, when they released a report entitled a Comprehensive Review of the Whole Question of Peacekeeping Operations in All Their Aspects. In it, the Committee concurred that "three basic principles of peacekeeping are essential for success: the consent of the parties involved, impartiality, and the non-use of force except in self-defence."41

CONCLUSION

Peacekeeping was established as a pragmatic tool, and was improvised from the very beginning. The traditional role of UN peace keepers has expanded in scope and complexity as the constraints on intra-state conflict imposed by the East-West confrontation have been eroded. This has created an urgent need to develop new approaches, new skills, and new ways of dealing with practical problems and situations at the strategic, operational and tactical levels. The starting-point for such development has predominantly been the concept of classical peacekeeping and its associated principles. The validity of this approach is questionable.

Perhaps the much-lauded, 'golden' principles of peacekeeping are not principles at all, but characteristics which typify international attempts to settle disputes during a specific historical era. To cling to these as a conceptual foundation for dealing with the new world disorder is an exercise in fallacious logic. Granted, there may seem to be no other option where the political will and resources for more effective forms of international collective security are absent, but as long as pragmatism is predominant, practice will continue to guide principle in a sea of conceptual confusion.

ENDNOTES

This article is published as part of the Training for Peace Project, a venture undertaken by the ISS in collaboration with the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI), and sponsored by the Norwegian Government. It is an edited version of a paper presented at an SANDF symposium as the theoretical part of EXERCISE MORNINGSTAR, Pretoria, 9-13 September 1996.



S Bailey, The United Nations and the Termination of Armed Conflict 1946-1964, International Affairs, Summer 1992, p. 469.



A Roberts, From San Francisco to Sarajevo: The UN and the Use of Force, Survival, 37(4), Winter 1995-96, p. 9.



F T Liu, United Nations Peacekeeping and the Non-Use of Force, International Peace Academy Occasional Paper Series, Lynne Rainier, Boulder and London, 1992, p. 11.



Ibid., pp. 11-12.



S Tharoor, Should UN Peacekeeping Go 'Back to Basics'?, Survival, 37(4), Winter 1995-1996, p. 58.



A Roberts, The Crisis in UN Peacekeeping, Survival, 36(3), 1994, p. 95.



Liu, op. cit., pp. 13-14.



UN, General Assembly Document A/3943, United Nations, New York, par. 178.



UN, UN Document S/11052/Res. 1, United Nations, New York, 27 October 1973, par 4.



M Goulding, The Evolution of UN Peacekeeping, International Affairs, 69(3), July 1993, p. 455.



Liu, op. cit., pp. 11-12.



Ibid., p. 19.



Ibid., p. 24-25.



Ibid., p. 27-28.



J B Hunt, Thoughts on Peace Support Operations, Military Review, October 1994, p. 77.



Roberts, op. cit., p. 95.



J Mackinlay, Improving Multifunctional Forces, Survival, 6(3), Autumn 1994, p. 150.



Tharoor, op. cit., p. 53.



S I Riza, Parameters of UN Peacekeeping, RUSI Journal, 140(3), 1995, p. 17.



Quoted in C Cushing, Humanitarian Assistance and the Role of NGOs, Centre for Policy Studies, Dalhousie University, Halifax, 1995, p. 8.



International Peacekeeping News, 2-01, March-April 1996.



T Findlay (ed.), Challenges for the New Peacekeepers, SIPRI Research Report, 12, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1996, p. 2.



Roberts, op. cit., pp. 95-96.



Ibid., p. 99.



Riza, op. cit., pp. 17-18.



Tharoor, op. cit., p. 54.



Riza, op. cit.



J Mackinlay, Improving Multifunctional Forces, Survival, 6(3), Autumn 1994, pp.150-151.



Roberts, op. cit., p. 99.



Ibid.



Dobbie, op. cit.



Mackinlay, op. cit., p. 151.



M Berdal, Armies in International Peacekeeping, paper presented at a conference on Taking the South African Army into the Future, Pretoria, 15 November 1993.



Ibid.



Roberts, op. cit., p. 101.



Tharoor, op. cit., p. 60.



B Boutros-Ghali, An Agenda for Peace: Preventive Diplomacy, Peacemaking and Peace-keeping, United Nations, New York, 1992.



B Boutros-Ghali, An Agenda for Peace: One Year Later, Orbis, 37(3), Summer 1993, p. 329.



M Goulding, The Evolution of UN Peacekeeping, International Affairs, 69(3), July 1993, pp. 451-464.



Committee of 34, Report on Peacekeeping Operations, A/50/230, 22 June 1995.