Intersected and Complementary Obstacles and Opportunities in Peacekeeping Operations, Atrocity Crime Prevention, and Related Security Responsibilities

Abstract

This chapter examines aspects of the clumsy and sometimes contentious relationship between two of the core security functions of the United Nations (UN): peacekeeping operations, specifically the protection of civilians (POC), and diverse responses to mass atrocity crimes, including those couched in the framework of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P). More and more, peacekeeping and mass atrocity response are recognized as analogous and intersected, though this is not without its problems; it is also increasingly recognized that intersected problems require intersected (not just interdepartmental) solutions that are consistent with our core values and that will require us to draw upon with greater effectiveness and transparency the resources and capacities of multiple UN organs and other stakeholders.

An intersected lens can be applied not only to some of the related obligations increasingly associated with both peacekeeping and mass atrocity response—such as eliminating illicit weapons, protecting civilians under siege, and defusing threats of violence before they materialize—but also as part of a larger preventative strategy with a wider range of stakeholders directed at potential conflicts fostered by climate change, resource scarcity, racial and gender discrimination, forced migrations, and other crises.

A number of policy centers, NGOs, and diplomatic missions and UN secretariat offices have endorsed—explicitly or otherwise—at least basic notions of complementary processes for implementing key issues. This chapter explicates some of the core premises, values and obstacles of policy complementarity, then examines ways in which peacekeeping, mass atrocity response and other UN security responsibilities might benefit from a commitment to larger and more open-ended complementary frameworks.