The G8 The United Nations And Conflict Prevention PDF Download

MULTIPOLARITY MULTIPOLARITY The role of the United Nations in conflict resolution and peacekeeping FEN OSLER HAMPSON∗ The end of the 1980s witnessed the negotiated settlement of some major regional conflicts which had plagued the Third World throughout the 1970s and 1980s.1 The Soviet Union withdrew its forces from Afghanistan. [...] 5 See, for example, Vladimir Petrovsky, «From crisis to preventive diplomacy in the United Nations,» paper delivered at the Conference on the Reduction of the Risk of Nuclear War through Multilateral Means, Kingston, Ontario, October 7-8, 1988; and Vladimir Petrovsky, «Towards the 21st Century: The Future for Multilateral Diplomacy», in The Role of the United Nations in Conflict Resolution. [...] UN involvement also could not have occurred without high levels of international cooperation more generally, including the concurrence of the parties to the dispute, the support of the five permanent members of the Security Council (and concurrence of at least four non-permanent members), and the willingness of countries to make troops available for peacekeeping and observer missions. [...] The UN's controversial and bloodied record in the Congo in 1960-64 (where ONU found itself caught in a civil war and had to use force to prevent the secession of the province of Katanga) and its ambiguous mandate in Lebanon are stark reminders of the dangers of peacekeeping in confrontations where the domestic/interstate boundary is blurred. [...] In the Middle East, Central America, Africa, and Asia, the demand for international mediation and peace-keeping, verification, and observer forces in regional conflicts depends upon the nature of the issues under dispute, the timing of the intervention, the qualities and skills of the intervener, and the methods used.