UN looking for peace Assessing the effectiveness of or pushing it away: peacekeeping missions

Resumen

This article is product of a topic review related to the UN Peacekeeping Missions established since 1945. This paper aims to address the role of these missions based on the UN official reports of each one of them in the attempt to reestablish and preserve peace in regions where conflict has arisen. The type of methodology used was phenomenological, focusing on a descriptive study. The paper is divided in two main sections, the first section is general overview of the current literature related with the effectiveness of those missions and the second section analyzes each intervention and their respective outcomes in order to come with a conclusion about the importance and effectiveness of peace keeping operations. The main conclusion reached has to do with the nature of the conflict. Missions that have taken place in a conflict related more with political aspects than those related with social issues have a better performance fulfilling their mandates and with this, having a good evaluation of their effectiveness. But, in those conflicts where there is a social aspect at stake, with manifestations of violence it is harder to achieve its mandates, thus, the effectiveness it’s less clear and in some occasions, it can be seen as a failure of the mission involved.