Peace Support Operations

1288 Words6 Pages
After World War II, the United Nations (UN) was established on the 26th of June 1945. The main reason for the establishment was to maintain world peace and prevent wars to occur. Other reasons for the establishment were to promote cooperation in solving international economic, social and humanitarian problems. The UN consists of 192 member states, including every sovereign state in the world. The UN has six different principal organs, and in the Peace Support Operations (PSO) context the General Assembly and the Security Council are the most important ones. Of course the secretary-general in the Secretariat, who is the leader of the UN, has an important role. The UN General Assembly consists of one representative from each member state, and it is the main deliberative assembly. The UN Security Council (UNSC) consists of 15 member states, where 5 of these are permanent members. They are United States, China, Russia, France and Great Britain. The other states are replaced every second year. The five permanent members hold veto power to resolutions and mandates released from the UNSC. The mandates from UNSC are binding decisions that member states have agreed to carry out. A mandate is very often used when it comes to PSO, and the UN has a dominant role in carrying out the different decisions made by the UNSC. There are three important principals to follow when the UN is taking peacekeeping in consideration. These principles have been followed since the foundation of the UN. The principles are: consent of the parties or the mandate, impartiality and non-use of force except in self-defence and defence of the mandate. PSO are a collective term for five various types of operations. These types are: conflict prevention, peacekeeping, peacemaking, peace enforcement and peace building. I will now give a short description of these operations and what factors that are
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