Report Sets Agenda For Remaking U.N. Peacekeeping

National Commission for Economic Conversion & Disarmament, 7 December 1995

U.N. peacekeeping operations, which have been engaged in salvaging peace out of threats of war since the U.N. was founded, are now in need of a rescue operation of their own.

Although the demands on U.N. peacekeeping have increased in the post-Cold War period, Secretary Boutros Boutros-Ghali announced this month that the funding crisis is forcing him to scale back these operations drastically. Meanwhile here at home, while the broad legislative attack on the U.N. appears to have been beaten back, in this session at least, the Republican Congress is still considering restricting the U.S. role in specific missions, notably in Bosnia. And while Congress and the Administration are negotiating a deal to pay the U.S.'s debt to the U.N., the strings attached may tie the hands both of U.S. participation and of the U.N. itself.

Whatever the results of these negotiations, they won't be enough to put this embattled institution on a firm footing. Without substantial reform and a strengthened institutional support structure, it is programmed to fail. There is an urgent need to shift the policy discussion beyond the immediate crisis and examine seriously the conditions under which U.N. peacekeeping can actually be expected to succeed.

To focus and inform that discussion, international security expert and Worldwatch Institute senior researcher Michael Renner has written _Remaking U.N. Peacekeeping: U.S. Policy and Real Reform_. In addition to analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of peacekeeping operations thus far and of U.S. policy toward them, this report provides a comprehensive set of recommendations for short- medium- and long-term reforms that could bridge the gap between the prescriptions for current crisis management and the vision of a fully capable post-Cold War U.N. peacekeeping system.

The report is published by the National Commission for Economic Conversion & Disarmament. To see an executive summary of the report, go to http://www.fas.org/pub/gen/ncecd/reports/un.html The Commission's home page is at http://www.fas.org/pub/gen/ncecd/

During the U.N. 50th anniversary celebrations, political leaders from around the world exhorted the U.N. to 'reinvent itself,' Renner said. It is timeopast timeoto take this charge out of the realm of the rhetorical flourish and put it into practice. Let this report serve as a working agenda for doing so.