United Nations Peacekeeping Challenge: The Importance of the Integrated Approach.

PositionBook review

UNITED NATIONS PEACEKEEPING CHALLENGE: The Importance of the Integrated Approach

Editors: Anna Powles, Negar Partow and Nick Nelson

Published by: Ashgate, Farnham, 2015, 279pp, 65 [pounds sterling].

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Near the start of this book, then UN Under-Secretary-General Ameerah Haq notes that for UN peacekeeping operations 'the age of innocence has passed'. The central message from Haq is that we need to accept that peacekeeping has become a far more dangerous activity. This is a trend that Haq dates from 2003, the year that UN envoy Sergio de Mello in Iraq was deliberately killed. Essentially a number of peacekeeping missions now find themselves in environments where anti-state actors view blue helmets as the enemy and seek to target them. Furthermore, some missions are explicitly about the protection of civilians, which can then bring peacekeepers into direct conflict with insurgent groups. This is the case for peacekeeping operations like MINUSMA in Mali or MONUSCO in Congo. (Although it lies outside the scope of this book, the African Union's Mission in Somalia, which is not a UN mission but is UN mandated, has cost the lives of more than 1000 peacekeepers since it started in 2007.)

Massey University's Centre for Defence and Security Studies has pulled together a valuable collection of chapters on the contemporary complexities surrounding peacekeeping. This volume is the record of the presentations made to the Pacific Army Chiefs' conference in Auckland in 2013. The book is able to draw together the views of generals who have led missions, UN officials and independent academic observers. These contributions are very thought provoking, and some will stay with the reader for a long time.

Martin Dransfield offers some insights into how the New Zealand Defence Force approaches peacekeeping, drawing on his experiences in East Timor and Afghanistan. First, he notes the difficulty of addressing a wide set of governance needs --he had to ask his clergyman to mentor Bamyan's Ministry of Education, and his physician to do the same with the Ministry of Health. Moreover, the Provincial Reconstruction Team needed a combination of peacekeeping troops, police and civilian experts to function effectively. Second, Dransfield recognises that cultural awareness is a 'force multiplier'. He outlines his efforts to establish who held local power and authority--often not those with formal political tides--and set about bringing them on board. In...

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