UN Peacekeeping in Civil Wars

An in-depth 2007 analysis of the sources of success and failure in UN peacekeeping missions in civil wars.

Lise Morjé Howard (Author)

9780521881388, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 29 November 2007

418 pages, 2 tables
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.7 cm, 0.66 kg

'In this impressive work of scholarship, Lise Morjé Howard subjects UN peacekeeping in civil wars to critical and rigorous scrutiny … this is a first-rate book that deserves wide readership in policy, university, and informed public circles.' Perspectives on Politics

Civil wars pose some of the most difficult problems in the world today and the United Nations is the organization generally called upon to bring and sustain peace. Lise Morjé Howard studies the sources of success and failure in UN peacekeeping. Her in-depth 2007 analysis of some of the most complex UN peacekeeping missions debunks the conventional wisdom that they habitually fail, showing that the UN record actually includes a number of important, though understudied, success stories. Using systematic comparative analysis, Howard argues that UN peacekeeping succeeds when field missions establish significant autonomy from UN headquarters, allowing civilian and military staff to adjust to the post-civil war environment. In contrast, failure frequently results from operational directives originating in UN headquarters, often devised in relation to higher-level political disputes with little relevance to the civil war in question. Howard recommends future reforms be oriented toward devolving decision-making power to the field missions.

1. Introduction
2. The failures: Somalia, Rwanda, Angola, Bosnia
3. Namibia: the first major success
4. El Salvador: centrally-propelled learning
5. Cambodia: organizational dysfunction, partial learning and mixed success
6. Mozambique: learning to create consent
7. Eastern Slavonia: institution-building and the limited use of force
8. East Timor: the UN as state
9. The ongoing multidimensional operations
10. Conclusion: two levels of organizational learning.

Subject Areas: Public international law [LBB], United Nations & UN agencies [JPSN1], International institutions [JPSN], International relations [JPS]