Peacekeeping

UN peacekeepers are sent to regions where armed conflict has recently ceased (or paused) to enforce the terms of peace agreements and to discourage combatants from resuming hostilities. Since the UN does not maintain its own military, peacekeeping forces are voluntarily provided by member states of the UN. All UN peacekeeping operations must be approved by the Security Council.

The founders of the UN had envisaged that the UN would act to prevent conflicts between nations and make future wars impossible. Those hopes have not been fully realized. During the Cold War (from about 1945 until 1991), the division of the world into hostile camps made peacekeeping agreement extremely difficult. Following the end of the Cold War, there were renewed calls for the UN to become the agency for achieving world peace, as there are several dozen ongoing conflicts that continue to rage around the globe.

The UN Peace-Keeping Forces (called the Blue Helmets) received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1988. In 2001, the UN and Secretary General Kofi Annan won the Nobel Peace Prize "for their work for a better organized and more peaceful world."

The UN maintains a series of United Nations Medals awarded to military service members who enforce UN accords. The first such decoration issued was the United Nations Service Medal, awarded to UN forces who participated in the Korean War. The NATO Medal is designed on a similar concept and both are considered international decorations instead of military decorations.

Successes in security issues

The Human Security Report 2005, produced by the Human Security Centre at the University of British Columbia with support from several governments and foundations, documented a dramatic, but largely unrecognized, decline in the number of wars, genocides and human rights abuses since the end of the Cold War. Statistics include:

• a 40% drop in violent conflict;

• an 80% drop in the most deadly conflicts; and

• an 80% drop in genocide and policide.

The report argued that international activism — mostly spearheaded by the UN — has been the main cause of the post–Cold War decline in armed conflict, though the report indicated the evidence for this contention is mostly circumstantial.

In the area of Peacekeeping, successes include:

A 2005 RAND Corp study found the UN to be successful in two out of three peacekeeping efforts. It also compared UN nation-building efforts to those of the U.S., and found that of eight UN cases, seven are at peace, whereas of eight U.S. cases, four are at peace.

Failures in security issues

In many cases UN members have shown reluctance to achieve or enforce Security Council resolutions. Such failures stem from the UN's intergovernmental nature — in many respects it is an association of 192 member states who must reach consensus, not an independent organization.

Other serious security failures include:

• Failure to prevent the 1994 Rwandan Genocide, which resulted in the killings of nearly a million people, due to the refusal of Security Council members to approve any military action.[23]

• Failure by MONUC (UNSC Resolution 1291) to effectively intervene during the Second Congo War, which claimed nearly five million people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), 1998-2002, and in carrying out and distributing humanitarian aid.[citation needed]

• Failure to intervene in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre: despite the fact that the UN designated Srebrenica a "safe haven" for refugees and assigned 600 Dutch peacekeepers to protect it, the peacekeeping force was not authorised to use force.[citation needed]

• Failure to successfully deliver food to starving people in Somalia; the food was instead usually seized by local warlords. A U.S./UN attempt to apprehend the warlords seizing these shipments resulted in the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu.

• Failure to implement provisions of United Nations Security Council Resolutions related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

• Failed to prevent or help sufficiently in the area of Darfur genocide: a crisis still exists in that area.