UN Peacekeeping in Lebanon, Somalia and Kosovo: Operational and Legal Issues in Practice

Description

The concept of UN peacekeeping has had to evolve and change to meet the challenges of contemporary sources of conflict; consequently, peacekeeping operations have grown rapidly in number and complexity. This book examines a number of issues associated with contemporary multinational peace operations, and seeks to provide insights into the problems that arise in establishing and deploying such forces to meet the challenges of current conflicts. The focus of the book is three case studies (Lebanon, Somalia and Kosovo), involving a comparative analysis of the traditional peacekeeping in Lebanon, the more robust peace enforcement mission in Somalia, and the international administration undertaken on behalf of the international community in Kosovo. The book analyses the lessons that may be learned from these operations in terms of mandates, command and control, use of force and the relevance of international humanitarian and human rights law to such operations.

Dr Ray Murphy is a Senior Lecturer in Law at the Irish Centre for Human Rights, National University of Galway, Ireland.

"The publication of Ray Murphy's UN Peacekeeping in Lebanon, Somalia and Kosovo is timely...Murphy's first-hand experience as a peacekeeper in UNIFIL is clearly an added value for the book...There are few if any books that combine this with a legal analysis of peacekeeping... This lends not only credibility but also some interesting anecdotes...The book's overall assessment of U.N. peacekeeping is critical but hopeful." -Marten Zwanenburg, Leiden University