The nature of war and conflicts has changed over time. We rarely see inter-state conflicts in the present world. With the end of Cold War, conflicts have become intra-state in nature. We see ethnic clashes or majority vs. minority conflicts in different parts of the world.
In the United Nations charter, there is no mention about peacekeeping operations. But Articles 6 and 7 of the charter provide the legal framework of sending peacekeeping missions to any state. Before sending peacekeeping missions, there is a need of getting permission of the United Nations Security Council as well as the consent of the conflicting parties. The main objective of sending peacekeeping missions is to maintain peace and security in the 'conflict areas' so that conflicts may not escalate further. The peacekeepers play a neutral role and do not intervene in the conflicts. They follow the self-defence policy.
With the end of Cold War, intra-state conflicts have spread to different countries both in Africa and Europe. In 1994, ethnic conflicts broke out in Rwanda between two ethnic communities -- Hutu and Tutsi. Just within three months, nearly one million people were killed in the ethnic conflict. No immediate action was taken by the international community to stop the conflict. It was not easy to take a quick decision by the United Nations to send peacekeeping missions. The process involved bureaucratic decisions, and, thus, was very sluggish. This led to changes in peacekeeping operations. From then on, the United Nations did not need permission of the conflicting parties for sending peacekeeping missions if the violence kept intensifying.
The United Nations peacekeepers can also now use force if it becomes necessary. They are now following the doctrine of necessity, not self-defensive policy.
The world has stepped into the third generation of peacekeeping operations. Their duty is no more limited to maintaining a peace treaty or a ceasefire. They are now engaged in 'peacemaking' and 'peace-building' processes.
Humanitarian intervention has nowadays become complementary to peacekeeping operations. But there is a debate on humanitarian intervention. Humanitarian intervention is taken under the R2P (Responsibility to Protect) framework. R2P says that if human causality occurs in large numbers in any place of the world, it is the duty of the world community to protect the innocent civilians. Humanitarian intervention is a political or pseudo-geopolitical issue. There is no legal basis for it. There is no mention of 'humanitarian intervention' in the United Nations charter.
Humanitarian intervention actually started with the Iraq-Kuwait war, in which the USA formed an alliance and sent multilateral groups to Kuwait to fight against Iraqi soldiers. They went there without mandate of the United Nations. From then on, humanitarian interventions are made in different states by great powers in their own interest. We have seen humanitarian interventions in Libya, and in Egypt. Syria remained free of the intervention because of the active role of Russia and China.
There is a sharp difference between peacekeeping operations and humanitarian interventions. Humanitarian intervention is a geopolitical issue and there is no mandate of the United Nations. But geopolitics has started influencing peacekeeping operations also. Thus peacekeeping operations have now become apparently a part of international politics, like the humanitarian intervention, in the present-day world.
The writer is an MSS student, Dept. of International Relations, University of Dhaka. [email protected]
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