Full Description
Armed groups are intrinsic to conflict. Pursuing myriad aims, they shape and are shaped by the conflict landscape. UN missions too inhabit this landscape. They too must decide how best to pursue their goals of supporting early peacebuilding and so-called stabilisation. This book argues that the UN is peacekeeping in places where there is no peace to keep. A profoundly confused UN has failed to develop the instruments to adequately identify armed groups, and then deal with the challenge they pose. This book is a policy guide for UN missions. It contemplates the challenging nature of non-permissive UN mission environments and offers a challenge to the UN to think afresh about the way it undertakes missions in these settings. The book appropriates several underdeveloped concepts � robust peacekeeping, political processes, and the protection of civilians � and uses them to ignite the conversation on a UN stabilisation doctrine.
Contents
Acknowledgements -- List of acronyms -- Introduction -- UN missions -- Chapter One Armed groups in modern warfare -- Roots of conflict -- Motivation (purpose and identities) -- Recruitment -- Popular support -- Logistics -- Command and Control (C2) -- Chapter Two Forming a response: UN missions -- Yugoslavia: UNPROFOR -- Somalia -- After 1999 -- Chapter Three Methods, challenges and opportunities for engagement -- Political process -- The role of the UN -- Engaging armed groups -- Negotiated disarmament -- Chapter Four Role and development of robust peacekeeping -- Levels of intervention and the functions of the military component -- Adherence to principle -- Robustness: the concept -- Presence, posture and profile -- Political-military interface -- Blowback and escalation -- Constraints -- Chapter Five Prioritising the protection of civilians -- Why do armed groups victimise civilians? -- Countering civilian victimisation -- Conceptual challenges -- Operational issues -- Information gap -- Conclusion -- The Horta Report -- Mandates and UN relations with TCCs -- Reforming the UN system -- Tailoring missions -- Appendix -- Index.
