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The text discusses two recent books that examine the rise of stabilization in UN peacekeeping and international interventions. The first book, "Stabilization and Human Security in UN Peace Operations" by Alexander Gilder, explores how UN peacekeeping can provide a holistic approach to ending armed conflicts and building peace. Gilder argues that while some peacekeeping practices align with a human security approach, the focus on stabilization and increased militarization often undermines this approach. The second book, "Stabilization as the New Normal in International Interventions: Low Expectations?" edited by Roberto Belloni and Francesco N. Moro, provides a broader analysis of stabilization across various actors and locations. The book highlights the negative implications of stabilization, such as its security-focused nature and retreat from human rights and democracy. Overall, both books offer critical appraisals of stabilization interventions and raise important questions about its effectiveness and future use. [Extracted from the article]

While new 'multidimensional' peacekeeping missions emerged at the end of the Cold War, more 'traditional' monitoring missions continue to operate. This work reviews the three current peacekeeping missions in the Middle East, with mandates to monitor buffer lines or zones between Israel and its previously warring neighbours: the UN Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO), the UN Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF), and the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). We provide an overview of these three missions, their mandates, the circumstances from which they emerged and evolved. We then consider causal factors that have contributed to their effectiveness over the years and examine how such factors apply in the current state of these missions. Finally, noting that the region evolves and so must the missions, we offer recommendations for how they could remain effective into the future by investing in new technological capabilities and maintaining the integration between their analysis units. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The twenty-first century peacekeeping landscape is defined by the multiplicity of institutional frameworks under which international operations are deployed. Small states with limited resources cannot meet every demand for troop contributions and face the inevitable dilemma of choosing whose 'flag' to carry. For the first decade after joining NATO and the EU, the Baltic States gave a clear priority to NATO and U.S.-led military operations, but since the 2014 Ukrainian crisis gradually shifted their focus to the UN framework. Drawing on interviews with policy-makers in the three Baltic countries this article aims to explain this recent shift. It reviews the main theoretical assumptions about troop contributions to the UN peacekeeping operations and burden-sharing behaviour among NATO allies, and suggests that the recent troop deployment decisions of the Baltic States are best explained by a realist focus on national security concerns. The seemingly 'internationalist' context of UN peacekeeping operations simply happened to be most suitable for a bilateral exchange with their European allies, namely Germany and France, that in turn contributed troops to NATO's Baltic flank. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 2003, the European Union (EU) has launched eight military operations with an executive mandate in the framework of its European (now Common) Security and Defence Policy (ESDP/CSDP), all of which have utilized deterrence to fulfil their missions. Some have done so implicitly by having a mission that requires them to keep certain actors from doing something unwanted, whilst others have done so explicitly by having deterrence clearly mentioned as one of their core tasks in their mandates. Despite this, deterrence in the context of CSDP has been an almost totally neglected subject in the academic literature. Furthermore, the EU itself has tended to take the deterrence effect of CSDP operations for granted, which is dangerous because it may blind it to potential problems that may in fact be undermining their credibility. This article seeks to launch a more focused discussion on deterrence in the context of EU security policy by analysing the credibility of CSDP operations’ deterrence postures. Based on findings from case studies on operations Althea and Atalanta, it argues that CSDP operations’ deterrence postures lack credibility because they have insufficient resources for taking care of their deterrence tasks. Furthermore, they do not communicate threats effectively. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Despite the certification of Côte d’Ivoire’s 2010 presidential elections by the United Nations Operations in Côte d’Ivoire (UNOCI), they resulted in the most violent of Sub-Saharan Africa, in the two decades since the transition to a democratic dispensation. UNOCI and Ivorian authorities embarked on a certification process in order to infuse credibility into a system and institutions divided along religious, regional, and cultural fault lines. Instead, the four months of fighting between the two main political parties nearly plunged the country back into civil war. This paper examines why certification could not provide a credible process; it considers the roles and leverage of the broader international community, to conclude that UNOCI did not have the relevant tools or capacity at its disposal, nor were there adequate incentives to resolve the factors threatening the peacefulness of elections. By prioritizing the holding of elections, without ensuring sufficient levels of peace, security, and inclusivity in Côte d’Ivoire, certification not only failed, but enabled the flourishing of an environment inimical to free, transparent, and credible elections. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article considers Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH)'s constitutional reform path options following the 20-year anniversary of the Dayton Agreement that ended the war. The need for substantive structural and constitutional reform has not gone away, and there is an open question on whether and how Euro-Atlantic integration processes might influence reform outcomes. First, a brief review of constitutional reform efforts to date is presented. Second, arguments for and against constitutional reform in BiH are summarized. Next, some characteristics of federal and confederal systems are introduced to frame discussions on BiH decision-making capabilities, and the role of the state vs lower levels of government. This includes a discussion on the issue of a BiH ‘coordination mechanism’ to manage EU integration, and whether or not the state might need some sort of supremacy clause. The article closes with some musings on the apparent trajectory of the country. The case of BiH is notsui generis, and can contribute to the literature and potentially influence policy-makers interested in the implementation and possible re-negotiation of peace treaties and constitutions – issues relevant to any countries emerging from divisive, violent conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines the ways in which Bosnia's continuing governance problems are rooted in the relationship between voters and parties implied in the Dayton Accords. Political competition and the party system in Bosnia are influenced by the structure of government and electoral system in the Dayton Accords and subsequent regulations, which gives preference to a model of representation based on ethnic parties. This article examines the party system and nature of competition in order to show the weaknesses in this ethnic model of representation as well as the ongoing inability to establish alternative models such as broad multi-ethnic parties. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article uses the lenses of citizenship to examine the uneven distribution of voting rights in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). While recognizing the significance of power-sharing in BiH, the article argues that the key obstacle to modifying the politics of inclusion and exclusion through citizenship and the franchise is the static nature of political competition in the country. The intimate relationship between political parties and their ethno-centric agendas on the one hand, and the multi-tiered governance structure on the other, prevents the possibility of reaching an agreement on constitutional reform as it would disrupt the current power balances that favour ethnic elites. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The data on sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) in UN peacekeeping missions show a sharp decline between 2006 and 2007 which has yet to be explained in the relevant literature. This article partially closes that gap by examining one measure which was introduced to improve investigation processes and deter possible perpetrators, the conduct and discipline units (CDUs). Using a mixed methods design, the quantitative analysis shows that overall, the introduction of a conduct and discipline unit in missions is negatively and significantly correlated with the number of SEA allegations. The case study of MONUC/MONUSCO corroborates these results, indicating that deterrence measures likely contributed to the reduction of the number of allegations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Transforming security governance in areas of limited statehood such as Somalia is notoriously challenging yet international actors continue to try. The uneven record of interventions is partly explained by the resultant projects focusing on the perceived value of what is transmitted, rather than on the way in which it is received, and partly on a misunderstanding of the nature of the security sector to be reformed. The experience of Somalia's three regional police forces emphasizes that security actors operate in a dynamic arena, rather than an institutionalized sector. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Comprehensive Security Sector Reform (SSR) has become a crucial component of many international peace- and statebuilding operations. The paper assesses the consequences of these attempts to foster international standards of ‘democratic security governance’ in the security sectors of post-conflict or fragile states. The paper builds on qualitative case study research of SSR interventions in Timor-Leste, Liberia, and the Palestinian Territories, conducted 2010–2012, to trace patterns of adoption, adaptation or rejection of international security governance standards by domestic actors. The article uses insights from sociological organization theories to identify different types of ‘hybrid security orders’ that result from encounters between international and domestic models of security governance in SSR processes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The United Nations Stabilisation Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) is the latest of seven UN missions in the country, stretching over 20 years of international involvement. If the UN's Security Sector Reform (SSR) mission has had a ‘stabilizing’ influence on the country following Aristide's forced exile since 2004, a string of sexual scandals and the cholera scandal has progressively contributed to modify the local perception of the mission, seen as yet another foreign ‘occupation’ in Haiti. This article argues that while the resistance to the UN in Haiti is clearly contextual – linked to certain events and actions of certain individuals – it is also, and more fundamentally, structural in form. The article explores themes around the local resistance encountered by the UN in Haiti, using James Scott's multi-levelled approach of the landscape of resistance to highlight the complex nature of statebuilding in Haiti, while linking the more recent form of resistance to MINUSTAH to the specific securitization approach adopted by the mission and its restrictive mindset. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Since 2003 the EU has launched 16 peacekeeping missions in Africa in most cases in cooperation with the UN. Therefore, this article takes an inter-organizational perspective on the EU's peacekeeping activities in Africa. Theoretically the article makes a contribution to the growing literature on inter-organizational approaches by applying niche selection and resource exchange theory to the field of security studies. The paper finds that EU missions in the past followed a targeted and niche approach in which it has played a facilitating but not dominating role in UN peacekeeping operations. However, in order to make effective use of this targeted approach the EU and UN are currently engaging in a substantial reconstruction of their relationship by building an interlocking peacekeeping architecture in which elements of resource pooling are central. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the joint mission of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) and the United Nations Assistance Mission in Somalia (UNSOM) during 2013, including in regard to stationing their respective peacekeeping forces in Somalia. The joint mission's role in supporting the government of Somalia, including in regard to assisting it in recapturing Somalian regions under control of the terrorist organization Al Shabaab and aiding in the country's security, is discussed.

Between 2002 and 2008, the European Union simultaneously applied interventionism and the promotion of local ownership as policy approaches in its peacebuilding efforts in Bosnia and Herzegovina. This article introduces an analytical framework to evaluate the coherence of the EU's policies and applies this framework to two case studies involving the police sector: the EU's support to the fight against organized crime and to negotiations on a police reform. The article concludes that the two policy approaches applied by the EU were incoherent and that this incoherence contributed to the failure to achieve police restructuring in Bosnia. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The increasing privatization of military and stability operations has received considerable scholarly attention. Existing scholarship, however, has largely focused on the privatization of state foreign policy, overlooking the empirical analysis of international organizations' use of commercial actors in the conduct of crisis management operations. The present study fills this gap by investigating the role of commercial contractors in supporting European Common Security and Defence civilian and military missions. By doing so, the article intends to advance the empirical knowledge of the privatization of foreign policy activities and the scope, determinants and future prospects of EU reliance on commercial actors for CSDP crisis management operations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Eastern Africa Standby Force is one of the five planned regional forces of the African Standby Force (ASF). Since February 2004 work has been underway to raise an Eastern Africa brigade to operational status. However, Eastern African states may prefer to solve their security problems in a unilateral military fashion, rather than through the integrated model of the ASF. Resources, as always in Sub-Saharan Africa, are scarce, operational capability appears to be growing only slowly, and significant training and airlift problems are unsolved. As these problems are common to all five brigades, some thoughts are presented in the conclusion to provide a simplified ASF way forward. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) programme as implemented in South Sudan provides a perfect entry point to study the interaction between an international intervention and local contexts. The article describes and analyses the DDR programme in South Sudan as a set of practices that are at the core of international peacekeeping and yet are highly challenged by the specificities of local contexts. Consequently, programme results are far from what the international organizations involved expected from the outset, and the case is a vivid example of a lack of context-based approaches to peacebuilding. The article is based on fieldwork conducted among practitioners, project implementers and ex-combatants in South Sudan in 2012. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article analyses China's contemporary engagement in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) as an example of Chinese involvement in a resource-rich, conflict-affected country. Following a large ‘minerals for infrastructure’ agreement signed in 2008, China's activities in the DRC are often presented as an example of a departure from Western-led liberal peacebuilding and development, by providing ‘corrupt’ Congolese national elites with new sources of unchecked rents; or it is viewed as a positive alternative to Western approaches, by focusing on win–win development and reconstruction. Both these views are flawed. Rather than offering a marked alternative to a Western ‘liberal’ peacebuilding project, this article argues that Chinese interests have increasingly coincided with evolving Western interests in support of stabilization and market-driven economic activities. This, however, does not offer a clear pathway to security and development in the DRC. On the contrary, both Chinese and Western involvement in the DRC provide possibilities for continued insecurity, rather than any fundamental break from previous patterns and structures of politics. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Within the broader debate over the political economy of statebuilding, the role of foreign direct investment (FDI) in fragile and post-conflict settings is increasingly controversial but still understudied. This paper examines the tensions between the good governance agenda currently being implemented in Iraq and the investment dynamics occurring at the country's national and provincial levels. Drawing on disaggregated data, the paper argues that the flow of FDI is reinforcing destabilizing dynamics in Iraq by increasing levels of inequality, deepening the decentralization process, and undermining internal and external balances of power. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article provides a reprint of the United Nations' (UNs') Security Council Resolution 2071 adopted on October 12, 2012, which is in regard to international intervention in support of the Malian armed forces. Topics, including the terrorist group Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb's (AQIM's) alleged presence in the Sahel and support for the Economic Community of West African States' (ECOWAS') possible deployment of troops to assist the Malian armed forces, are discussed.

Despite increased international attention to managing the potential impacts of peacekeeping on host countries, unintended consequences continue to emerge. This article focuses particularly on the alternative economies that peacekeeping operations generate and the differential economic impacts on individuals who come into contact with peacekeepers. Based on empirical evidence derived from fieldwork in Liberia, the article highlights the everyday lives of women whose livelihoods have been affected by the presence of peacekeeping missions. It also discusses how such economies adjust during the peacekeeping drawdown phase, and explores the dynamics that such economies have on specific segments of the Liberian population. The argument is that, while peacekeeping economies are critical in stimulating the local economy and providing livelihoods during and in the immediate aftermath of war, they have negative unintended impacts that need mitigation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Security Sector Reform (SSR) has developed into a key component of international peacebuilding agendas. However, there is a lack of sufficient knowledge of the advantages and drawbacks of different reform processes. This study offers a comparative analysis of two post-war states with diverse approaches to the reconstruction of the national armed forces after a civil war: Sierra Leone after the 1999 Lomé Peace Accord, where the competing warring parties were integrated into a single force; and Liberia following the 2003 Accra Peace Agreement, where the old army was disbanded and a new force was recruited and built from scratch. The findings show that each approach was associated with distinct benefits and risks during the implementation process. However, the outcomes are also similar in many important respects, and raise questions about the long-term sustainability of these reforms. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses United Nations peacekeeping missions in Abyei, Sudan and Mali as of November 2012. An overview of the United Nations' (UNs') Interim Security Force in Abyei (UNISFA), including their monitoring of the border of South Sudan and Sudan and the agreement between Sudan's People's Liberation Army (SPLM) and the Government of Sudan (GoS) to demilitarization of Abyei, is provided. An overview of the UN's resolution 2071, which assists the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the African Union (AU) in planning for an international intervention in reaction to the Islamic armed groups Ansar Dine and the Mouvement pour le unicité et le jihad en Afrique de l’Ouest's (MUJAO's) taking over territory in northern Mali.

This article focuses on women's involvement in peacekeeping operations and the introduction in 2007 of an all-female formed police unit (FFPU). Possible benefits and challenges of deploying all-female contingents in peace operations are considered and feminist theories of international relations are drawn upon to evaluate arguments for including women in peace and security missions. Media discourses on the Indian FFPU deployed to Liberia in 2007 are analysed, revealing a potential to reshape attitudes about the role of women in peace and security, and emphasizing that femininity need not be incompatible with strength and capacity for protection. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article provides a reprint of the United Nations' (UNs') Security Council Resolution 2043 authorizing the United Nations Supervision Mission in the Syrian Arab Republic (UNSMIS), which was passed at the Security Council's meeting on April 21, 2012. The article discusses the UNs' perspective on the armed violence in Syria following the Syrian Revolution of 2011 as of April 2012, including on the violation of human rights by the Syrian government and armed groups.

Abyei was one of the most contested areas of Sudan's Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) of January 2005. Drawing on direct experience, the article examines the agreement and the experience of trying to support its implementation. It analyses the relationship between this and the overall problems of the CPA, and of peacekeeping in the newly independent South Sudan. Drawing on relevant literature, it examines the wider issues for the negotiation of peace agreements; for UN mandates, including the protection of civilians; for the limitations of peacekeeping; and for the importance of continuing political engagement. It argues that in some situations smaller missions without a heavy military component might in fact achieve more. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article problematizes the EU's approach to conflict transformation in its neighbouring countries, with specific reference to Bosnia and Herzegovina. It claims that the way in which the EU engages with domestic elites differs considerably from its engagement with the grassroots – an interaction that is heavily reliant on cooperation with civil society. This in turn produces a process of divergent transformation, creating further cleavages between elites and citizens. Emerging centrifugal processes obstruct the development of a common political platform for the citizens and represent an obstacle to the creation of a social contract in the peacebuilding context. This undermines the possibility of achieving sustainable peace and results in the transformation of past conflict into new conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article reflects on the dynamics associated with state building in post-conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) with a particular focus on the role of external agency. The debate over constitutional reform has featured prominently in BiH since the early 2000s. The objective of this reform was to transform Dayton into a functional institutional framework that prepared the country for both international withdrawal and EU integration. Based on a detailed analysis of two international initiatives launched in 2005 and 2009 this article analyses the reasons why constitutional engineering in post-Dayton BiH failed. More specifically, the article argues that this reform failed as a result of various shortcomings including international divisions; a democratic deficit inherent in the process; and the neglect of local conditions (including conflicting notions of the future form of the state by both local and external actors). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An emerging tension characterizes conflict resolution practice: promoting power-sharing between ethnic groups while simultaneously mandating women's inclusion in peace processes and in post-conflict institutions. Scholars of ethnic conflict have not adequately theorized the gender implications of power-sharing, and practitioners have failed to implement mechanisms that would make power-sharing representative of constituencies beyond ethno-national cleavages. There is no substantive reason why the representation of women and ethnic groups should be in tension. Nevertheless, gender is often ignored in the power-sharing literature and gender-mainstreaming practices appear irreconcilable with power-sharing practice. Drawing on three cases of post-conflict power-sharing – Bosnia and Herzegovina, Burundi, and Northern Ireland – this article identifies reasons why this tension remains in practice, especially the overriding emphasis in power-sharing on ethno-nationalist elites and conflict protagonists. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article investigates the performance of Poland and the Czech Republic in the US-led regime change wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The article indicates a significant gap between the Czech and Polish discourses and practices related to the two countries' contributions. In the two crises, discourses revolved around the notion of universal values and support for legal and legitimate peace support operations mandated by the UN. But the practices did not match those discourses and were actually driven by the beliefs that form the Atlanticist ideology. The article analyses the successful internalization of US discourses and threat perception in Poland and the Czech Republic through the use of ‘cascade argumentation’. The practical results of this internalization are then examined. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In formulating its plans for government, the National Transitional Council (NTC), the political arm of the anti-Qaddafi uprising in 2011, was heavily guided by international thinking regarding the experience of de-Ba'athification in Iraq. In attempting to avoid ‘reliving the Iraq war’, the NTC, made a conscious decision to integrate the ‘Old Guard’ into the new order, but thereby created new challenges by alienating those who had led the rebellion. This Eyewitness is based on insights – from the author's interviews in Libya (particularly at the Second Congress of the rebel militias of April 2012), and argues that the fledgling central authority added to post-Qaddafi instability by failing to secure the buy-in of the rebel militias into their post-conflict vision of a civilian order, replete with elections. It concludes that in their zeal to correct the mistakes the West made in Iraq, Libya's new authorities may well have over compensated creating fresh obstacles to the country's stabilization and reconstruction. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Violence in the context of international peace interventions is rarely problematized. It is associated with the conflict belligerents, while the violence deployed by peacekeepers is not conceived as such, but as ‘peace operations’ that mitigate, subdue or deter the belligerents' violence. This common interpretation comes from a discrimination between ‘local’ and ‘international’ that is considered theoretically necessary to understand interventions. The distinction obscures the ways in which the two kinds of violence are intimately intertwined and tied to competing claims about legitimate agency. This article analyses the peace interventions (2002–11) that led to regime change in Côte d'Ivoire. Based on this case-study analysis, it argues that violence and its representations affect and constitute agency. In Côte d'Ivoire, strict ontological commitments to the ‘local’ and ‘international’ quality of agents neglect the violence used in the context of intense negotiations over, and attempts at imposing, a line between ‘local’ and ‘international’ agency. The analysis points to how violence established, transformed, and enabled agency under conditions of international peace interventionism in Côte d'Ivoire. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The official French justifications for the 2011 intervention in Côte d'Ivoire fall into three categories: existence of a Security Council mandate; protection of French nationals and others; and France's respect for democracy. The respect for democracy justification was dropped when ex-president Gbagbo was arrested. The French role in the arrest itself was categorically denied by French officials, while Operation Licorne's strict respect for Security Council mandates and the imminent need for protection of various categories of persons were underlined. Democracy and human rights remerged in the President Sarkozy's concluding policy-oriented speech in order to justify France's honourable role in reinforcing these principles in Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

From a post-colonial perspective, this article argues that the Mission des Nations Unies pour la stabilisation en Haiti (MINUSTAH) helps in our understanding of how the conventional peace operation model is, at the field-level, constantly challenged and renegotiated. Formally conceived as a francophone mission operating in a francophone country, MINUSTAH's deployment and interactions on the ground proved to be complex. Composed of a majority of Latin American troops, MINUSTAH has been exposed to symbolic and material pressures that range from the UN ‘liberal peace model’, French colonial heritage and previous US interference, to post-colonial worldviews and local demands. Benefitting from the combination of an academic approach and a practitioner's perspective this article demonstrates that although MINUSTAH was framed inside a specific UN mission pattern, grounded in a supposedly dominant francophone culture and located on the ‘outskirts’ of the United States, it has been subjected to a plurality of other pressures – such as demands from leading contributing countries – and opened to multiple re-articulations of its original mandate. This article politicizes the multiple encounters between a pre-defined peace operation model and everyday field realities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Using a probabilistic method to shed light on the effective use of the French language in the so-called Francophone states, the article argues that Organisation internationale de la Francophonie (OIF) membership is not a reliable marker of French-language proficiency for countries contributing to peace operations. It further dismisses the assumption that sending peacekeeping personnel from Francophone countries automatically improves the efficiency of peace missions deployed in Francophone areas. The Belgian participation in the UN peace operation in Lebanon is used as a case study to test the empirical validity of the former arguments. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The spate of attacks against humanitarian NGOs since 2003 has raised a series of fundamental questions for humanitarian operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and other conflict and post-conflict situations. This article reflects on the ‘new humanitarianism’ and how increasingly, this humanitarianism is under attack in violation of the Geneva Conventions on the Laws and Customs of War. It argues that humanitarian action is under attack because of efforts by Western governments (particularly the United States) to make humanitarian NGOs an extension of their military and political agendas. In circumstances of the politicization of humanitarian aid, it becomes difficult for combatants to distinguish between Western governments' agendas and those of NGOs. The article concludes by calling for the insulation of humanitarian aid from politics. This separation of politics and humanitarianism can only be realized by returning to traditional principles that have guided humanitarian action. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the status of the African Union-United Nations Hybrid Operation in Darfur (UNAMID) as of December 2011. The role of the UNAMID in monitoring the mid 2011 Agreement for the Adoption of the Doha Document for Peace in Darfur, Sudan between the Sudanese government and the Liberation and Justice Movement is discussed. An overview of displacement, rule of law, human rights abuses and governance is provided. An overview of the the UNAMID peacekeeping forces in Darfur, including its civilian personnel and police, is also provided.

Following more than a decade of NATO's intervention in Afghanistan, it is often argued that the UN, alongside its international partners and the Afghan government, has failed to facilitate good governance and a stable democratic political order. In charting the evolving UN role in ‘democratizing’ Afghanistan, this article analyses why this is so. The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), facing considerable historical and institutional constraints, has had neither the will nor the capacity to implement its ambitious democratization mandate. Instead of aiming for a system of governance along ‘Western’ lines, it should focus primarily on promoting an appropriate, institutionalized, workable political order, regional consensus, and national reconciliation as the necessary foundations for bringing peace and stability to the country. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

After many decades of eschewing participation in UN peacekeeping missions, the People's Republic of China has since the 1990s rapidly reversed its critical stance and become an enthusiastic supporter of and contributor to several different types of UN missions including, some that have involved non-traditional peacekeeping. Evolving Chinese peacekeeping policy has suggested that despite the country's widely acknowledged rise to great-power status, within UN peacekeeping it still takes on the role of a middle power in its preferences for multilateralism and 'norm-taking'. Although China has stated that it wishes to continue its deep engagement in UN peacekeeping within its established norms for the near future, its presence as a rising power has prompted much new debate on how the country will tacitly and directly shape peacekeeping policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The People's Republic of China asserts that it is a responsible power in international affairs, emphasizing its participation in UN peacekeeping as evidence of its exemplary behaviour. In order to uncover what 'responsible power' means in the context of Chinese participation in peacekeeping, this article analyses the motivations and barriers that shape China's peacekeeping deployments. The term 'responsible power' has value not only because it is flexible, capturing China's ambivalence regarding peacekeeping, but also because 'responsible power' enables China to frame the discourse regarding its foreign and security policy. It appears that for the near future, China remains committed to modest engagement in peacekeeping. The article concludes that China has the potential to foster an ever more constructive role in the UN peacekeeping regime. However, in order to effectively engage China, a deeper understanding of the policy priorities of Chinese foreign policy actors is needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To understand China's change in position regarding UN peacekeeping, the country's internal debates and policy towards the UN operations in East Timor from 1999 to 2002 comprise an essential case study. Despite its traditional concerns about the sanctity of state sovereignty, China was willing to support and contribute personnel to East Timor peacekeeping missions. This was a result of its growing confidence in addressing regional strategic issues, its development of the 'New Security Concept', which encourages cooperative solutions to strategic issues, and its desire to remake its regional identity to reflect a more conservative and pragmatic approach to regional peacebuilding. This change in policy not only allowed China to become more at ease with UN peacekeeping participation, but also contributed much to the country's Asia-Pacific diplomacy, which increasingly stressed multilateralism and partnership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides a reprint of the Peace and Security Council of the African Union (AU)'s conference paper from December 2, 2011 regarding the AU Mission in Somalia (AMISOM). Particular focus is given to AMISOM's military assistance to Somalia's Transitional Federal Government (TFG), including in combating the terrorist group Al Shabaab. The AU also mentions the United Nations (UNs') role in AMINSOM.