Peacekeeping

"Since 2003 the EU has launched 16 peacekeeping missions in Africa in most cases in cooperation with the UN. Therefore, this article takes an inter-organizational perspective on the EU’s peacekeeping activities in Africa. Theoretically the article makes a contribution to the growing literature on inter-organizational approaches by applying niche selection and resource exchange theory to the field of security studies. The paper finds that EU missions in the past followed a targeted and niche approach in which it has played a facilitating but not dominating role in UN peacekeeping operations. However, in order to make effective use of this targeted approach the EU and UN are currently engaging in a substantial
reconstruction of their relationship by building an interlocking peacekeeping architecture
in which elements of resource pooling are central."

""The philosopher Paul Virilio has said that ‘speed is the unknown side of politics’. If the international presence in Haiti is a kind of governance – providing both security (in the form of UN peacekeeping troops) and ‘social security’ (in the form of aid) – it is an expeditionary governance, at speed and at a distance. The United Nations 'LogBase' literally placed a barrier between ordinary Haitians outside the fence and the international workers who governed the flows of food, water, cash, troops and social services. Airborne meetings removed aid workers above Haitian territory, accelerating quickly away, giving new meaning to the term ‘The Humanitarian Movement.’ Now, as international attention toward Haiti wanes, drawn to other crises, NGOs are cutting staff or even packing up altogether. The complex of NGOs, UN agencies and foreign militaries that governed Haiti in the aftermath of the earthquake was not bound by a firm social contract, but rather a fleeting social liaison, a humanitarian one-night-stand, here one day, gone the next. Within this context, human security was not a set of rights and entitlements claimed by citizens, but rather windfalls available briefly for ‘beneficiaries.’ If governance is globalized and fragmented across thousands of public and private entities, the commitment to provide human security becomes informal, resisting codification, backing away, step-by-step, to the ‘Exit Strategy.’

In this chapter, I examine the international aid system in post-earthquake Haiti as a form of governance, considering the implications of its structural shorttermism on human security. First, I will provide a theoretical framework by exploring the implications of Zygmunt Bauman’s concepts of ‘Liquid Modernity’ for the global post-modern social contract. Second, I will explain the international aid effort in Haiti and its implications for human security. Then, I will look at several examples of ways ‘structural short-termism’ has played out in housing, education, water and sanitation, technology and volunteerism in Haiti. Finally, I will conclude with reflections on how the liquification and informalization of the social contract eroded human security in Haiti.""

The international organizations involved in peacebuilding, democratization and peacekeeping in the Yugoslav successor states have employed thousands of locally recruited workers as project officers, language intermediaries and support staff. This makes them a distinct employment sector within these post-socialist and in several cases post-conflict economies, most significantly in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo. This paper evaluates arguments in favour of regarding this workforce firstly as a group of workers suffering precarity and secondly as a privileged social elite. While there are good grounds for recognizing them as a distinctive social group, this distinctiveness has not led to a widely expressed social identity based on the commonalities of their employment.

This article argues that the use of sexual infiltration by police and criminal collaborators represents a strategic deployment of surveillance technology by the state with the aim of creating Foucault’s “docile bodies” through the development of totalising omnipresence. The insertion of police into the private sphere of activists’ sexual relationships – a site presumed to be outside of state gaze – serves to not only disrupt the target communities but also to reverberate throughout social networks and create inactivity. By exposing informants from within one’s own “family”, the state is able to collect intelligence, spread insecurity and display totalising disciplinary power to the social movement under observation.

This article presents a capabilities-expectations analysis of United Nations (UN) peacekeeping. I use the capabilities-expectations gap analytical concept to examine and compare the actual UN peacekeeping capabilities and expectations in the post-Cold War era, and to assess the feasibility of two basic options for closing the large gap that has developed between the two since the early 1990s – a UN capabilities increase and/or a UN expectations decrease. I argue that as long as UN Member States continue to be unwilling and/or unable to provide political leadership, instruments and resources commensurate with the daunting tasks of peacekeeping and peacebuilding, a UN expectations decrease will remain the only feasible option for closing the gap between UN capabilities and expectations. As in the past, this means that the UN will constantly be forced to make Faustian choices between the quantity and quality of its peacekeeping operations. In the 21st century, however, the repercussions of both of these choices are likely to be more formidable than ever before. If UN peacekeeping suffers another high-profile failure because of a Rwanda-like inaction or a Srebrenica-like inadequate action, the UN’s collective security role is bound to be significantly eroded not only through a combination of limited resources and its Member State conflicts, but also by a substantially increased involvement of various non-UN actors, and by a growing sense of the limits of what can be expected of the UN.

"Článek poskytuje analýzu účasti českých vojáků v operacích OSN na udržení míru. Po stručném vysvětlení termínů a podoby praktické realizace operací OSN na udržení míru se autoři zabývají strategickými, právními a finančními aspekty působení českých jednotek v misích OSN. V úvahu se také bere výcvik a odborná příprava, po které následuje kritická analýza hmotných i nehmotných přínosů, které přináší účast českých vojáků české armádě a České republice. Část textu se věnuje přehledu klíčových slabých stránek a problémů souvisejících s účastí českých vojáků v zahraničních multilaterálních misích. Autory překvapilo zjištění, že doposud byl proveden pouze minimální systematický výzkum analyzující působení Armády ČR v operacích OSN na udržení míru. Článek je tedy považován také za výzvu k dalšímu výzkumu a analýze této významné problematiky.
The article offers an analysis of the participation of Czech soldiers in the United Nations (UN) peacekeeping operations. After a brief introduction concerning the terminology and practice of UN peacekeeping, the authors examine the strategic, legal and financial aspects of Czech army contributions to
UN peacekeeping missions. Training and preparation procedures are also reviewed, followed by a critical analysis of both the tangible and intangible benefits that the participation of Czech soldiers brings to the Czech army and the Czech Republic. One section of the article is devoted to a review of the key weaknesses and problems related to the participation of Czech soldiers in multilateral missions abroad. The authors were
surprised to find out that little systematic research has been hitherto conducted when it comes to the analysis of the Czech army contributions to UN peacekeeping operations. This article is therefore also intended as a call for further research and analysis of this important subject matter."