Peacekeepers Shouldn’t Always Be Peaceful

[Deeq A.]

Almost two decades ago, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan asked Lakhdar Brahimi, one of the most experienced diplomats to have ever served the U.N., to chair a commission to examine the peacekeeping disasters of the 1990s, from Bosnia to Somalia and Rwanda, to see if any lessons could be learned. His hard-hitting report guided my actions as head of U.N. peacekeeping from 2000 to 2008. And its recommendation to “tell the Security Council what it needs to know, not what it wants to hear” is as valid as ever — which is why we must acknowledge that peacekeeping today has changed dramatically since the Brahimi Report’s publication in 2000.

Source: Hiiraan Online