Author: Richard Gowan / Topic: Peace Studies

Author:: Richard Gowan and Bruce D. Jones
Publication Date:: 07-2010
Content Type:: Working Paper
Institution:: Center on International Cooperation
Abstract:: Conflict prevention is getting harder. In an increasingly complex international order, tensions between major powers complicate efforts to avert or mitigate civil wars. There has been a proliferation of potential mediators including regional organizations, individual governments and non-governmental organizations—often bringing specific expertise and political leverage to emerging crises, but risking duplication and turf wars. But while the United Nations is constrained by tensions among member states and challenged by the array of alternative institutions, it still has an important role in prevention. The UN has a unique “reach” into many unstable countries through its aid and development networks. Whatever the internal and external limitations on the UN, there is a widespread expectation that the Secretary-General and his officials can and should intervene in escalating crises, either to halt violence or at least to limit the suffering that it causes.
Topic:: Conflict Resolution, Conflict Prevention, Civil War, Peace Studies, and United Nations

Author:: Richard Gowan
Publication Date:: 04-2009
Content Type:: Policy Brief
Institution:: Center on International Cooperation
Abstract:: In the last sixth months, NATO and the UN have both confronted the possibility that their largest individual peace operations may fail. In Afghanistan, NATO troops have struggled to contain the Taliban. In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) the UN was unable to halt rebel attacks that displaced as many as 250,000 people last September.
Topic:: Conflict Resolution, Conflict Prevention, Security, International Cooperation, and Peace Studies
Political Geography:: Taliban and Democratic Republic of the Congo

Author:: Richard Gowan, Heinrich Boell Stiftung, and Daniel Korski
Publication Date:: 02-2009
Content Type:: Working Paper
Institution:: Center on International Cooperation
Abstract:: Relations between the European Union (EU) and Iraq have normalized over the last couple of years. But despite committing more than € 900 million to reconstruction efforts since 2003 and having set up a European Commission office in Baghdad in 2005, the European bloc will need to step up its engagement if the country is to manage forthcoming challenges, such as integrating the “Sons of Iraq” into the Iraqi security forces, holding provincial elections, and maintaining security while President Obama leads a drawdown of US combat forces.
Topic:: Peace Studies, War, and International Security
Political Geography:: Iraq, Europe, Middle East, and Arabia

Author:: Richard Gowan, Bruce Jones, and Jake Sherman
Publication Date:: 04-2009
Content Type:: Working Paper
Institution:: Center on International Cooperation
Abstract:: The politics of peacekeeping: crisis and opportunity. United Nations peace operations face an extended and dangerous period of strategic uncertainty. A series of setbacks have coincided with military overstretch and the financial crisis, raising the risk that UN peacekeeping may contract, despite high demand.
Topic:: Security, Peace Studies, United Nations, and Financial Crisis

Author:: Richard Gowan
Publication Date:: 06-2007
Content Type:: Working Paper
Institution:: Center on International Cooperation
Abstract:: Peacekeeping is a repetitive business. All too often, international forces are required to return to crumbling states that have already played host to one or more peace operations – and in some cases seem to have become dependent on outside interventions. Take Haiti, to which five separate UN missions have been deployed in the last fifteen years. Or Timor-Leste, which remained stable for less than five months after the UN departed in December 2005 – UN police are back there now, alongside Australian troops. Or, looking at a longer timeframe, think of the Democratic Republic of Congo. In the 1960s, the UN deployed nearly 20,000 troops to the former Belgian colony. Today, it has similar-sized force back in the country - few analysts believe it should withdraw soon. And then there is Lebanon. Next year will be the thirtieth anniversary of the UN's first deployment to the south of the country. After last summer's crisis and the ensuing surge of UN troops, there may be blue helmets around to mark such anniversaries for a while yet. And it is possible to identify a series of recurring patterns in Lebanese peacekeeping.
Topic:: Conflict Resolution, Conflict Prevention, Peace Studies, and United Nations
Political Geography:: Turkey, Middle East, and Lebanon

Author:: Richard Gowan and Ian Johnstone
Publication Date:: 03-2007
Content Type:: Working Paper
Institution:: International Peace Institute
Abstract:: Efforts to predict the future of peacekeeping almost always prove to be unsuccessful. In 1958, United Nations Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld reported to the General Assembly on the lessons of the UN Emergency Force deployed to Egypt during the Suez crisis two years before. He surrounded his observations with qualifications, as some “circumstances are of such a nature that it could not reasonably be expected that they would often be duplicated elsewhere. Nor can it be assumed that they provide a sufficient basis to warrant indiscriminate projection of the UNEF experience in planning for future United Nations operations of this kind.” Sure enough, when the UN began to deploy to the Congo two years later, the 1958 report was to prove “not especially pertinent” to the task at hand.
Topic:: Conflict Resolution, Peace Studies, Terrorism, and War
Political Geography:: Egypt

Refine your search