Student No: 2015110986

Topic: UN at war: examining the consequences of peace-enforcement mandates for the UN

peacekeeping operations in the CAR, the DRC and Mali

Essence of a Peacekeeper

When the absence of the violence and hostility is evident where a certain individual is free from

the fear of violence and a region experience a lack of conflict one can be certain that there is peace.

Though achieving it and maintaining it would be proven difficult since I think it would require a goodwill,

resources, cooperation, power and understanding. United Nations have conducted many operations and

provided help like the one they have done in CAR, DRC and Mali which most of it was a failure if the true

essence of peace keeping is considered.

Honestly, I don’t know anything much about the UN’s work as a peacekeeping works especially

on their failed attempts to operate them to those countries who needed it. I first encountered the word

peacekeeper in videogames which is most of them falls into a genre of war. The first one though that I

have heard it in real life was one of uncle of my classmates on high school whereas he was sent to a

border to guard it that no person in both sides should enter it so that they can prevent and maintain the

peace there as a neutral party. This leads to what I think before what a peacekeeper is, an individual or a

group that is aiming to preserve peace by providing service to ensure no one would violate a certain

agreement or rule that could lead to conflict. With that in mind, I can actually see how hard it is to

stabilize peace if one is not prepared to do one or don’t have the capability to do so. Since you have to

properly train your staffs and members regarding the issue and learn to deal with them to efficiently and

effectively keep peace. I learned that if one to be able to stabilize peace, there should be peace in the

first place since if there’s no such thing you can’t keep it but instead you are going to enforce it rather
than maintain it there. I was also able to know a lot about the operations of the United Nations

regarding peacekeeping like in CAR, DRC and Mali or the MINUSTAH in Haiti and see how they actually

somehow compromised this effort.

As for the opinions of the author, I agree in most of his opinions. One of this is that UN should

limit the use of force or its excessive form and be pressured by the concept ‘’that they are not doing

something’’ to deal with the situation and should only utilize it when there is a grave danger and threat

to the civilians, to stabilize critical situation and should be on a restricted duration to not only promote

peace but to show neutrality between the conflicted. Though I believed that the applications of modern

technology in UN’s operation in peacekeeping could prove significant, I also believed that if not properly

tested or applied in a specific and precise manner this could actually sabotage both the operation and

specially the essence of peacekeeping which is keeping the situation and not kindling the fire that could

ignite conflicts that could lead to more chaos or precisely cause insurgency, terrorism or war. The

problem in the United Nations is that they operate the two sides of the coin. One is enforcing the peace

while the other is meant to keep it. This could affect the decisions for those in the field and those who

are managing it since both required different approach on the matter. One actually prioritizes force

while the other consider it the last resort. In my opinion if they wish to continue keeping peace, they

must consider prioritizing keeping it rather than enforcing it and make an office that would specialize on

that area.

For my conclusion, peacekeeping should be handled by a neutral organization and should not

take side or interfere with the politics of a sovereign state that may disrupt their image as a non-biased

institution that would severe trust to nations involve. Which means that as they do they peacekeeping

operations they must continually develop it and train their staffs that could deal with neutral situation.

But as of now I also think this is actually hard to do so, since just like the Drug war in the Philippines we

can’t actually prioritize both the drug addicts and policemen since our policemen or other policemen
from other countries don’t necessarily possess the ability to neutralize the addicts without killing them

in most situation. This is why peacekeeping in my opinion would be very hard if the resources,

connections and power is not utilized properly wherein proper is not even defined yet.