KEEPING THE PEACE

If you see soldiers wearing sky-blue

helmets in a conflict zone, they are peacekeepers
from the United Nations. UN peacekeeping
operations were the idea of Canadian Foreign,
who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work.

T
he first UN peacekeeping mission was
in 1948, after the first Arab- Israeli
conflict. Since then, there have been
more than 50 operations. Since the end
of the Cold War, the number of UN
peacekeeping operations has increased
dramatically. In 2003, there were
fifteen, involving 37,000 personnel.
Nearly 130 countries have
contributed personnel to UN
peacekeeping operations. Since 2000,
the main contributors have been
Pakistan, Bangladesh, India and
Ghana. Other important contributors
are the Scandinavian countries, plus
Finland, Canada, Fiji, Ireland, Italy
and Australia. Recently Eastern
European countries such as Poland and
the Czech Republic also became involved.The mid-1990s saw two of the UN's
greatest failures. The genocide in Rwanda in 1995 occurred despite warnings of the
dangers. About half a million people died. Similarly, in Bosnia, UN peacekeepers
were unable to protect civilians. More than 7,000 Muslims were killed at Srebrenica.