Security Council Peacekeeping Operations: U.N. Failure at Keeping the Peace

By Emily von Werlhof
Emily von Werlhof, Editor-in-Chief of International Law Studies, is a third year student at Albany Law School concentrating in International Law. She is a native Californian and alumna of the University of Washington.
At the Law School, Emily has been active in Albany Law's Women's Law Caucus and the Family Violence Litigation Clinic and Immigration Project (FVLC). She was a member of the first student team to handle an immigration case, and she helped get freedom from domestic violence declared to be a fundamental human right in Albany. She recently spent her summer interning for a judge on the South Gauteng High Court in Johannesburg, South Africa, as well as working on immigration and refugee law as an intern for the Legal Resources Center in Cape Town.
Emily has also worked with the Albany Law Pro Bono Society Veteran’s Project, was last year’s chair of the Donna Jo Morse Client Counseling and Negotiation Competition, and is currently an article editor for the Albany Government Law Review.
She prepared this paper as an Independent Research Project with Prof. Alexandra Harrington.


The United Nations (U.N.) Security Council was established through the U.N. Charter as one of the six main organs of the United Nations. Pursuant to Chapter V, Article 24 of the U.N. Charter, membership of the U.N. confers on the Security Council “primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security, and agree that in carrying out its duties under this responsibility the Security Council acts on their behalf.”

The Security Council first met in London, in 1946, and is now permanently located in the U.N. Headquarters in New York. In order to carry out the Security Council’s responsibility, peacekeeping forces have been utilized.

The U.N. Security Council is responsible for U.N. Peacekeeping Operations around the world. The first peacekeeping operation was launched in 1948. Currently, U.N. Peacekeeping forces are deployed on four continents with 15 active operations.

This paper will discuss the effectiveness of the U.N. Security Council in carrying out its primary responsibility by evaluating the ability of U.N. Peacekeepers to successfully complete their mandate, and comparing that success to the monetary, social, and political costs of deploying Peacekeepers. The first section of this paper will examine the structure of the U.N. Security Council and its operating constraints. The second section will evaluate the peacekeeping operations in Kosovo, Pakistan, Congo, Lebanon, and Sudan, as well as their ability to successfully carry out their mission mandate.

The third section will discuss the monetary, social, and political costs of the several operations evaluated in section two. The fourth section will conclude by arguing that the U.N Security Council has failed to uphold its primary responsibility because the monetary, social, and political costs of deploying peacekeepers significantly outweighs the success of peacekeeping operations and is in need of restructuring.
____________________________
To read the paper, open HERE

Tweet