UN’s Multi-Faceted Approach: Peacekeeping, Peacemaking, and Peace Building

When violence erupts between or within nations, the international community rarely has just one tool to respond. The United Nations approaches the maintenance of peace not as a single action but as a continuum of strategies that fit different stages of a conflict. This framework was formally laid out in 1992, when then Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali wrote An Agenda for Peace, a landmark report that defined four interconnected strategies: preventive diplomacy, peacemaking, peacekeeping, and peace building. Understanding how these four approaches differ and how they reinforce one another is essential for anyone studying how the world tries to manage armed conflict.

The origins of “An Agenda for Peace” 🔗

The report did not appear in a vacuum. In January 1992, for the first time, the UN Security Council met at the level of heads of state and government. They recognised a hard truth: the mere absence of war between states did not guarantee real peace, and threats to security were increasingly economic, social, humanitarian, and ecological in nature. The Council asked the Secretary-General to recommend ways to strengthen the UN’s capacity for peace operations.

Boutros-Ghali responded with An Agenda for Peace later that year. The post-Cold War world had unfrozen dozens of regional conflicts that the superpower rivalry had previously suppressed. Peacekeeping operations were multiplying rapidly, and it was becoming clear that deploying troops alone could not produce durable peace. The report therefore offered a layered set of responses, each suited to a different point in the lifecycle of a conflict.

Preventive diplomacy: stopping conflict before it starts 🔗

Preventive diplomacy is the earliest line of defence. The UN defines it as diplomatic action taken to prevent disputes from escalating into conflicts and to limit the spread of conflicts when they occur. The logic is simple and economical: it is far cheaper, in both human and financial terms, to prevent a war than to end one or rebuild after it.

This strategy can take the form of mediation, conciliation, or negotiation. A central instrument here is the Secretary-General’s “good offices” – the use of the office’s prestige and neutrality to bring parties to the table. The Secretary-General can act personally or dispatch special envoys to regions of tension to encourage dialogue, compromise, and the peaceful resolution of disputes.

Early warning and the role of envoys 🔗

Effective prevention depends on early warning. The UN continuously monitors developments worldwide to detect emerging threats. Sometimes the simple presence of a respected envoy in a troubled region can prevent tensions from boiling over. History offers striking examples of quiet diplomacy at work: the role of Secretary-General U Thant during the Cuban Missile Crisis and the mediation that facilitated the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan both illustrate how diplomatic intervention can defuse crises before or instead of war.

Peacemaking: bringing hostile parties to agreement 🔗

When prevention fails and conflict has already erupted, peacemaking becomes the priority. Peacemaking refers to diplomatic efforts aimed at bringing hostile parties to a negotiated agreement, essentially to cease active hostilities. While preventive diplomacy works before violence, peacemaking works to end violence that is already underway.

The tools of peacemaking are largely the same as those listed in Chapter VI of the UN Charter: negotiation, enquiry, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement, and resort to regional agencies. The Charter encourages parties whose dispute threatens international peace to seek a solution through these peaceful means first. A skilled mediator works with the conflicting sides, with their consent, to help them resolve their differences without recourse to force.

The link to adjudication 🔗

Peacemaking also includes the option of judicial settlement. The International Court of Justice, the principal judicial organ of the UN, allows states to submit their disputes for a binding legal ruling. This connects the diplomatic track of peacemaking with the formal process of adjudication, giving nations a peaceful, law-based path to resolve disagreements that might otherwise fester into armed conflict.

Peacekeeping: holding the line on the ground 🔗

Peacekeeping is perhaps the most visible UN activity. It involves deploying personnel – military, police, and civilian – to help implement and maintain agreements once fighting has stopped. Peacekeepers help create the conditions for a lasting peace, supporting ceasefires and giving political processes the space and security to take hold.

Interestingly, peacekeeping has no explicit basis in the UN Charter. It developed through practice as a way to bridge the gap between the peaceful settlement tools of Chapter VI and the enforcement powers of Chapter VII. For this reason, an early Secretary-General, Dag Hammarskjöld, famously described it as falling under “Chapter Six and a Half”.

The three core principles 🔗

UN peacekeeping operates on three basic and mutually reinforcing principles:

Consent of the parties: Peacekeepers deploy only with the agreement of the main parties to a conflict. This consent gives the mission both the legitimacy and the practical freedom to do its job. Without it, a peacekeeping force risks becoming just another party to the conflict.

Impartiality: Peacekeepers must deal with all sides evenhandedly. However, impartiality is not the same as neutrality or passivity. A mission must still hold parties accountable when they violate agreements or breach human rights standards – much like a referee who treats both teams equally but still penalises fouls.

Non-use of force except in self-defence and defence of the mandate: Peacekeeping is not an enforcement tool. Yet in volatile situations, the Security Council has granted some missions “robust” mandates, authorising them to use all necessary means to protect civilians under imminent threat and to deter attempts to disrupt the political process.

Evolution into multidimensional missions 🔗

Early peacekeeping mostly meant monitoring ceasefires and patrolling buffer zones. Today’s operations are far more complex. Modern multidimensional missions are tasked not just with maintaining security but also with protecting civilians, supporting disarmament and reintegration of former combatants, organising elections, promoting human rights, and helping restore the rule of law. This evolution shows how peacekeeping increasingly overlaps with the longer-term work of rebuilding societies.

Peace building: laying foundations to prevent relapse 🔗

The final strategy, peace building, focuses on the period after the guns fall silent. It addresses a sobering reality: many countries that emerge from war slide back into it. Peace building therefore involves reconstructing the social, legal, economic, and political structures of a society so that conflict does not recur.

This goes well beyond signing a ceasefire. It includes rebuilding institutions, strengthening governance, supporting economic recovery, promoting reconciliation, and re-establishing the rule of law. In short, while peacekeeping holds the peace, peace building tries to make it permanent by tackling the root causes that drove the conflict in the first place.

The Peacebuilding Commission 🔗

Recognising the need for sustained, coordinated attention to post-conflict recovery, the UN created the Peacebuilding Commission. It was established on 20 December 2005 through parallel resolutions of the General Assembly and the Security Council. As an intergovernmental advisory body, the Commission was mandated to bring together all relevant actors to marshal resources, propose integrated strategies for recovery, and focus attention on the reconstruction and institution-building that countries emerging from conflict so desperately need.

A key reason for its creation was to prevent nations from relapsing into civil war. The thinking, drawn from a high-level reform panel, was that preventing renewed conflict was more effective than repeatedly ending fresh outbreaks. The Commission was supported by a Peacebuilding Fund built on voluntary contributions, designed to ensure resources could be released quickly when a country needed them most.

How the four strategies fit together 🔗

It is important to see these strategies not as rigid, separate boxes but as parts of a single continuum. Preventive diplomacy operates before violence, peacemaking and peacekeeping during and immediately after it, and peace building over the long aftermath. In practice they often overlap. Modern peacekeeping missions, for instance, frequently carry peace building tasks within their mandates, helping to restore governance even as they maintain security.

The framework also reflects a deeper shift in how the world understands security. Peace is no longer seen merely as the absence of fighting. It is understood as the presence of stable institutions, justice, economic opportunity, and respect for human rights – the conditions that make a return to violence unlikely.

India’s role in UN peace operations 🔗

This framework is not abstract for India, which has been one of the most committed participants in UN peace operations since their earliest days. India is among the largest troop-contributing nations to UN peacekeeping. According to the government, more than 2,90,000 Indian peacekeepers have served in over 50 UN missions, with thousands currently deployed across active operations.

India’s engagement began with a field hospital in the Korean War and a pioneering role in the Congo in the 1960s, where it became one of the first nations to deploy women in peacekeeping roles. This long record of service – and sacrifice, as nearly 180 Indian peacekeepers have lost their lives in the line of duty – reflects a foreign policy rooted in the belief in dialogue, non-violence, and cooperation. India’s experience gives it a substantial stake in debates about how peacekeeping should be funded, mandated, and reformed.

Limits and challenges 🔗

None of these strategies is foolproof. The 1990s exposed painful failures. The inability of peacekeeping forces to fulfil their mandates in Somalia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Rwanda led to deep reflection within the UN. These tragedies prompted a renewed appreciation that consent and impartiality, while essential, could not be allowed to leave peacekeepers powerless against those determined to spoil a peace process or commit atrocities. The meaning of “minimum use of force” expanded to include the defence of the mandate itself, not merely the self-defence of the troops.

These hard lessons shaped the more robust, multidimensional operations and the peace building architecture we see today. They are a reminder that managing conflict is an evolving craft, constantly revised in the light of experience.

What do you think? Given that prevention is far cheaper than cure, why do you think the international community still invests so much more in peacekeeping and post-conflict recovery than in preventive diplomacy? And as a major troop contributor, what role should India play in reforming how these peace operations are mandated and funded?

References

1. https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/144858/
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Agenda_for_Peace
3. https://dppa.un.org/en/prevention-and-mediation
4. https://www.un.org/en/global-issues/peace-and-security
5. http://www.intractableconflict.org/www_colorado_edu_conflict/peace_standby/treatment/ungoodof.htm
6. https://unoca.unmissions.org/en/good-offices-preventive-diplomacy-and-mediation-0
7. https://legalclarity.org/what-are-un-peacekeeping-operations-and-how-do-they-work/
8. https://peacekeeping.un.org/en/principles-of-peacekeeping
9. https://peacekeeping.un.org/en/what-is-peacekeeping
10. https://www.un.org/peacebuilding/content/about-the-commission
11. https://archive.globalpolicy.org/un-reform/un-reform-topics/the-peacebuilding-commission.html
12. https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2109587&reg=3&lang=2
13. https://pesd.princeton.edu/node/561