THE HUMAN SECURITY RESPONSE FORCE: A DIFFERENT WAY OF PEACEKEEPING- PEACEKEEPING OPERATIONS: SUCCESS OR FAILURE?

摘要

During his visit of the German contingent of KFOR in Prizren/ Kosovo, the former German Minister of Defence, Dr. Peter Struck, claimed a political solution for Kosovo rather than to continue putting the burden of peacekeeping on the shoulders of the military only. Minister Struck was right: Peacekeeping should not degenerate into military operations nor should it be misused as a pretext for not taking political decisions as it is the case in Kosovo today. After having been engaged in peacekeeping operations from Somalia in 1993 to Kosovo in 2000, it is quite sobering to analyse and measure the results of the deployments of our forces there. Multi-national forces have been deployed to Somalia, Bosnia Herzegovina and Kosovo for years without having achieved a lasting success. The same applies to the operations of peacekeeping forces in Afghanistan and in Iraq. I am afraid that the focus of peacekeeping has indeed concentrated too much on the military side while not taking enough into account the civil side of the same coin, i.e. the urgency to build up a political administration and to reconstruct the economy of a troubled area.