Nurturing Peace: United Nations Peacebuilding Operations in the Aftermath of Intrastate Conflicts, 1945-2002

by Kim, Duk Hyang

After World War II, intrastate conflicts rapidly replaced interstate conflicts as the dominant threat to international peace and security, a trend that has become all the more evident in the post-Cold War era. Given the prevalence of civil wars, there is increasing awareness of the need for post-conflict settlement procedures, development of local capacity for conflict resolution, and long-term peacebuilding efforts. In his 1992 An Agenda for Peace, former UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali encouraged the international community to take responsibility for the full range of postconflict management roles by introducing “post-conflict peace-building.” Even though the term “peacebuilding” did not exist prior to Boutros-Ghali’s 1992 An Agenda for Peace, the UN from its inception after World War II has engaged in various types of operations to maintain peace and to build local capacities for conflict resolution. In addition to the UN, a number of NGOs in the field of humanitarian relief and development, such as World Vision, Oxfam, Save the Children, CARE, Catholic Relief Services, and the International Committee of the Red Cross, have decisively responded with a resolution offering to support efforts toward peace in the aftermath of intrastate conflicts after 1945. The goal of this paper is to investigate theoretically and empirically the success of the UN and the NGOs in intrastate peacebuilding operations from 1945- 2002. My empirical findings indicate that overall UN peacebulding operations contribute to promoting sustainable peace for war-torn societies. The findings also point out no statistical relationship between the efforts of the humanitarian NGOs and the duration of peace. A main reason might be that the NGOs primarily seek to relieve human sufferings rather than to remove the root causes of internal violence. For the 21st UN peace operations, this study offers several recommendations for an enhanced and strengthened UN. iii