The Role Of Multinational Peacekeeping — Successes And Catastrophic Failures

The idea behind UN peacekeeping is one of the more extraordinary bets civilization has placed on itself: that soldiers from unrelated countries can be deployed into an active or recently active conflict zone, not as conquerors or allies, but as a neutral presence whose job is to create conditions for peace.

This was never in the original UN Charter. There's no chapter that says "peacekeeping." The concept was improvised during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War when UN military observers were deployed to monitor ceasefire agreements. Dag Hammarskjöld, the second UN Secretary-General, formalized the concept in the 1950s, calling it "Chapter Six and a Half" — somewhere between the peaceful dispute resolution of Chapter VI and the military enforcement of Chapter VII.

Since 1948, the UN has deployed over 70 peacekeeping operations involving more than two million military, police, and civilian personnel from over 120 countries. As of 2024, there are roughly a dozen active missions with about 87,000 uniformed personnel deployed.

Those numbers represent something profound: the operational infrastructure for global collective security already exists. It's been tested. It functions. The question is always whether it's given enough to actually work.

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Successes in peacekeeping are structurally underreported. A country that doesn't relapse into war doesn't generate breaking news. But the evidence, when you compile it, is significant.

Mozambique (ONUMOZ, 1992-94). The General Peace Agreement ended a civil war between FRELIMO and RENAMO that had killed an estimated one million people and displaced millions more. ONUMOZ deployed 6,500 troops and oversaw the demobilization of 80,000 combatants. It organized and monitored elections in 1994. The mission ended on schedule and under budget. Mozambique has held regular elections since. Political scientists Walter and Snyder (1999) identified it as one of the clearest cases of successful post-conflict peacekeeping.

Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL, 1999-2005). Initially a disaster — 500 peacekeepers were taken hostage by the Revolutionary United Front in 2000. But the mission was reinforced (eventually reaching 17,500 troops, the largest UN mission at the time), secured key areas, and oversaw the disarmament of over 75,000 combatants. Sierra Leone held successful elections in 2002 and has not returned to civil war. The Special Court for Sierra Leone prosecuted war criminals, including Charles Taylor. The lesson: peacekeeping can fail, get corrected, and still succeed.

East Timor (UNTAET/UNMIT, 1999-2012). After the 1999 independence referendum from Indonesia triggered militia violence that killed approximately 1,400 people and displaced hundreds of thousands, the UN administered the entire territory, built a government from scratch, and transitioned to full independence. East Timor is now a functioning state. Imperfect, still developing, but sovereign and at peace.

Liberia (UNMIL, 2003-2018). Deployed after the Second Liberian Civil War, UNMIL at its peak had 15,000 troops. It oversaw disarmament, supported the election of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (Africa's first elected female head of state), and gradually drew down over 15 years. Liberia hasn't relapsed.

What the successes share: adequate troop numbers, a clear mandate, sustained international political commitment, integration of civilian governance and development components alongside military presence, and enough time to let institutions take root. Peacekeeping works when it's treated as a serious commitment rather than a symbolic gesture.

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Rwanda (UNAMIR, 1993-96). Force Commander Roméo Dallaire's January 11, 1994 fax to UN headquarters remains one of the most damning documents in diplomatic history. An informant inside the Hutu extremist movement told Dallaire that weapons were being stockpiled for mass extermination of Tutsis. Dallaire requested permission to raid the caches. Kofi Annan's peacekeeping department denied the request, citing the mandate's limitations.

When the genocide began on April 6, 1994, UNAMIR had approximately 2,500 troops. Rather than reinforcing, the Security Council voted to reduce the force to 270. Belgium withdrew entirely after 10 of its peacekeepers were murdered. Over 100 days, an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed, often with machetes.

The failure was not logistical. It was political. France had strategic interests in the Hutu government. The US, traumatized by the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu, was allergic to African intervention. The UK followed the US lead. The Security Council chose not to act. The architecture existed. The will didn't.

Dallaire has said repeatedly that 5,000 properly equipped troops could have prevented the genocide. The international community had those troops available. It chose not to deploy them.

Srebrenica (UNPROFOR, 1995). The UN declared six "safe areas" in Bosnia, including Srebrenica. The concept was inherently contradictory: areas were declared safe but the peacekeepers assigned to protect them were given neither the mandate nor the military capacity to actually defend them. Dutchbat, the Dutch battalion assigned to Srebrenica, had about 400 lightly armed troops facing thousands of heavily armed Bosnian Serb soldiers.

When Mladic's forces overran the enclave in July 1995, Dutchbat requested air support. It was delayed, then denied, then too late. The peacekeepers watched as men and boys were separated from women and girls. Over the following days, approximately 8,372 Bosnian Muslim males were executed and buried in mass graves.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia classified Srebrenica as genocide. The Dutch government eventually accepted partial responsibility, and the Dutchbat commander later described his force as having been used as "a fig leaf."

Somalia (UNOSOM II, 1993-95). The mission was tasked with nation-building in a country with no functioning government and heavily armed clan militias. It had no peace to keep. The October 1993 Battle of Mogadishu (the "Black Hawk Down" incident) killed 18 US soldiers and over 500 Somalis. The US withdrew, and the mission effectively collapsed. Somalia remained a failed state for decades.

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The pattern across both successes and failures is brutally clear.

Peacekeeping works when: - The Security Council authorizes a robust mandate with rules of engagement that allow force to protect civilians. - Troop-contributing countries send enough soldiers, properly equipped. - Major powers provide sustained political and financial support. - The mission integrates military, civilian, and development components. - There's a credible peace agreement to keep — or enough force to create one.

Peacekeeping fails when: - The mandate is deliberately vague to avoid political commitment. - Troops are deployed as a symbolic gesture with no capacity to act. - Major powers have competing interests that paralyze the Security Council. - The mission is called "peacekeeping" when there is no peace to keep and no willingness to make one.

The Brahimi Report (2000), commissioned after Rwanda and Srebrenica, stated this plainly: the UN must be able to project credible force, or it should not deploy at all. "No amount of good intentions can substitute for the fundamental ability to project credible force."

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The elephant in every peacekeeping discussion is the Security Council veto. Five nations — the US, UK, France, Russia, and China — hold permanent seats and the power to block any resolution. This means peacekeeping missions are authorized not on the basis of need but on the basis of whether any of the five permanent members objects.

Russia has blocked resolutions on Syria repeatedly. The US blocks resolutions on Israel-Palestine. China has historically abstained rather than engaged. The result: the worst crises are precisely the ones where peacekeeping is most needed and least likely to be authorized.

The architecture of global security is held hostage by a structure designed in 1945 for a world of five great powers. That structure has not been reformed despite 80 years of change in global power dynamics. Japan, Germany, India, Brazil, Nigeria, and others have sought permanent seats. None has succeeded. The P5 have no incentive to dilute their own power.

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Apply the premise. If every person on earth committed to collective security — if every nation said yes to the principle that mass atrocity is everyone's problem — what would peacekeeping look like?

1. Standing rapid-response force. Not troops assembled ad hoc from contributing nations after months of negotiation, but a permanent force trained and equipped to deploy within 48 hours. The Brahimi Report recommended this. It was never implemented.

2. No veto on atrocity prevention. A structural reform: no nation may veto a resolution authorizing intervention to prevent genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, or ethnic cleansing. The "Responsibility to Protect" (R2P) principle, adopted at the 2005 World Summit, affirmed this norm. It has been selectively applied (Libya 2011) and selectively ignored (Syria 2011-present).

3. Mandatory funding. Peacekeeping budgets are currently assessed as a percentage of GDP, with chronic shortfalls. A "yes" from everyone means peacekeeping is funded like defense — as a non-negotiable line item, not a charity case.

4. Accountability for inaction. If a body fails to prevent mass atrocity when it had the capacity to do so, there must be consequences. Currently there are none. No nation was sanctioned for blocking action on Rwanda. No government fell because Srebrenica happened.

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Read the following scenario and answer honestly.

A UN-designated safe zone is under threat. The peacekeeping force has 400 troops. The attacking force has 5,000. Air support has been denied twice. The force commander asks what to do.

1. What would you order? 2. What would the consequences be — for the people in the safe zone, for the troops, for the international order? 3. Now ask: who decided the force should be 400 instead of 4,000? Who denied air support? Those are the people who made this decision, not the commander on the ground.

Peacekeeping failures aren't operational failures. They're failures of political will made months or years before the crisis, in conference rooms far from the killing fields. If you want to understand what "we are human" costs, this is it: the willingness to put resources behind the rhetoric, or the willingness to admit that the rhetoric was always empty.

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- Dallaire, R. Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda (Random House, 2003). - Report of the Panel on United Nations Peace Operations (The Brahimi Report), A/55/305, August 2000. - NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Srebrenica: A "Safe" Area (Amsterdam, 2002). - Fortna, V.P. Does Peacekeeping Work? Shaping Belligerents' Choices after Civil War (Princeton University Press, 2008). - Howard, L.M. Power in Peacekeeping (Cambridge University Press, 2019). - International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, The Responsibility to Protect (2001).