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W IDESPREAD INTRA-STATE CONFLICT is not a new phenomenon. Its rise to the centre of attention in international policy circles is. UN involvement in intra-state conflicts is not new either. What is new is the increasing systematisation of UN involvement in conflict-torn societies. It is these two novelties of the post-Cold War world that shape the main concerns of this study. What is problematised
the creation of the UN itself. The UN’s first peacekeeping mission (UNSCOB) was authorised in response to the Greek civil war in 1947. Missions to Palestine, 1 Indonesia, 2 Kashmir, 3 and Korea 4 soon followed. All of these cases involved intra-state conflicts with strong inter-state dimensions. This early intra
This study explores the normative dimension of the evolving role of the United Nations in peace and security and, ultimately, in governance. What is dealt with here is both the UN's changing raison d'être and the wider normative context within which the organisation is located. The study looks at the UN through the window of one of its most contentious, yet least understood, practices: active involvement in intra-state conflicts as epitomised by UN peacekeeping. Drawing on the conceptual tools provided by the ‘historical structural’ approach, it seeks to understand how and why the international community continuously reinterprets or redefines the UN's role with regard to such conflicts. The study concentrates on intra-state ‘peacekeeping environments’, and examines what changes, if any, have occurred to the normative basis of UN peacekeeping in intra-state conflicts from the early 1960s to the early 1990s. One of the original aspects of the study is its analytical framework, where the conceptualisation of ‘normative basis’ revolves around objectives, functions and authority, and is closely connected with the institutionalised values in the UN Charter such as state sovereignty, human rights and socio-economic development.
,000 tons of humanitarian supplies over a period of about two years, the Biafran airlift resulted from the efforts of an ad hoc coalition of international non-governmental organisations and the ICRC, frustrated by the failed negotiations with the Nigerian government. But it wasn’t until the late 1980s and early 1990s, at a time marked by the resurgence of nationalist tensions following the disappearance of East–West antagonism and when the media coverage of the humanitarian consequences of multiplying intra-State conflicts favoured international intervention, that the
2020 ). Médecins Sans Frontières ( 2018 ), ‘ Syria: Siege on East Ghouta Leaves Medical Care in Complete Collapse ’, 24 February. www.doctorswithoutborders.org/what-we-do/news-stories/news/syria-siege-east-ghouta-leaves-medical-care-complete-collapse (accessed 2 February 2020 ). Meininghaus , E. ( 2016 ), ‘ Humanitarianism in Intra-State Conflict: Aid Inequality and Local Governance in Government- and Opposition-Controlled Areas in the Syrian War ’, Third World Quarterly , 37 : 8 , 1454 – 82 , doi: 10.1080/01436597.2016.1159509 . Mfutso
focus on social forces and pressures that impact on the UN’s organisational change. 9 The notion of ‘historical structures’, as we shall demonstrate below, provides a particularly promising avenue to investigate the normative connection between the UN and intra-state conflicts. While this notion is utilised by Knight to explore possibilities, potentials and prospects in the evolution of multilateralism
T HE NORMATIVE CONNECTION between the UN and intra-state conflicts is not static. It is a matter of continuous redefinition and reinterpretation as can be usefully observed in the context of intra-state peacekeeping environments. One of our contentions in this study is that, in the space of just three decades – that is, from the early 1960s to the early 1990s – the
T HE UN’S RESPONSE to intra-state conflicts did not take shape in a vacuum. International normative preferences which had an impact on active UN involvement in intra-state conflicts drew their inspiration from and interacted with the international political milieu. No doubt the wider historical context in which the UN had to operate underwent constant change, as did
Government, the party alleged to be in the ‘right’, against the external Turco-British threat. For the United States, on the other hand, the UN was confronted with a primarily intra-state conflict. The task was to restore domestic law and order by putting an end to the inter-communal strife: No one is threatening to take
recognised. In the context of intra-state conflicts – an armed conflict in which at least one party is a government – governments frequently refuse to recognise an adversarial group. 1 This non-recognition 2 can inflict harm (Taylor 1992 : 25), and it often manifests itself by the exclusion of a specific group from a national political system, meaning ‘an active, intentional, and targeted discrimination by the state against group members in the domain of public politics