BANGLADESH INSTITUTE OF INTERNATIONAL AND STRATEGIC STUDIES

EVOLVING TRENDS OF UN PEACEKEEPING: CHALLENGES FOR BANGLADESH AND ITS RESPONSES

Author: Md. Farid Uddin, Abu Salah Md. Yousuf

DOI Link: https://www.doi.org/10.566888/BIISSj2014v35n2a1

ABSTRACT

Peacekeeping has emerged as one of the core activities of the United Nations (UN). Due to ground realities, the doctrines, principles and structures of peacekeeping have evolved in accordance with necessity. In the traditional phase, during the Cold War era, peacekeeping was mostly limited to monitoring and observation affairs. In the post-Cold War era, there was an expansion of peace operations and "minimum use of force”, where necessary, emerged as an acceptable norm of peacekeeping. In the consolidation phase, after 2000, peace operations emphasised on peace building affairs i.e., democratisation, institution building, security sector reform (SSR) and human rights protection. The phase of New Horizon, which started in 2009 indicating changing trends, focuses mainly on development, capacity building, planning and oversight. It can be argued that the future peace operations are going to be more robust and multidimensional, and would concentrate on responsibility to protect civilians, human rights and environmental issues, gender mainstreaming, democratisation and institution building to achieve sustainable peace in the conflicting areas. Being a leading troops contributing country, Bangladesh will face new challenges to adapt with the emerging trends of UN peace operations. The challenges include dealing with new doctrinal issues and capacity building of its peacekeepers in the field level. In this respect, the main objectives of this paper are to understand the changing trends of UN peacekeeping and to identify potential challenges for Bangladesh and its likely responses in the coming days to continue its contributions in the UN peace operations.