UN Peacekeeping, Responsibility to Protect and Humanitarian Intervention

S. Krishnan
Additional contact information
S. Krishnan: S. Krishnan is an Assistant Professor in Seedling School of Law and Governance, Jaipur National University, Jaipur. He had worked as an Assistant Professor in Apex Professional University, Pasighat, Arunachal Pradesh. Besides teaching, he had worked as a Journalist in esteemed newspapers such as Indian Express, Daily News Analysis, online news portals and a magazine. He had also worked as a Liaison Officer in Indian Society of International Law, New Delhi.

India Quarterly: A Journal of International Affairs, 2020, vol. 76, issue 1, 120-135

Abstract: The question of armed intervention on behalf of the international community, in the internal affairs of a state against the wishes of the government of that state, in order to prevent widespread death or suffering among the population, is not a new one. Indeed Imperial Rome grappled with the same problems in Dalmatia and Judaea 2,000 years ago, as the international community does in those same regions today. How effective are peacekeeping operations in preventing and stopping violence? Is there an alternative to United Nations (UN) and regional peacekeeping operations? The practice of UN peacekeeping is evolving in many instances into robust peacemaking actions with a positive responsibility to protect (R2P) civilians within the field of operations. The R2P (and ‘responsibility while protecting’ (RwP)) concept sets out a key principle to enable the international community to prevent atrocity crimes. Since its emergence, however, there have been intense discussions over how to put the principle into practice. Some aspects of the concept remainf unclear, including how to undertake, as the last resort, the use of military force. These issues must be considered within the boundaries set by R2P which seek at all costs to avoid the use of force for other reasons than ceasing mass atrocity crimes. The use of force, therefore – including possible military action by the international community, given growing international reluctance to accept grave threats to peace and security, including mass crimes against defenceless populations – has to be thoroughly analysed and comprehended. This article presents an analysis of the development of civilian peacekeeping, its relevance in the field of conflict resolution and its autonomy from multidimensional peacekeeping, championed by the UN.

Keywords: protection of civilians; peacekeeping; United Nations; international humanitarian law; international human rights law; responsibility to protect (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0974928419901198 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:indqtr:v:76:y:2020:i:1:p:120-135

DOI: 10.1177/0974928419901198

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in India Quarterly: A Journal of International Affairs
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().