The United Nations and peacekeeping : Lessons learned from Cambodia and East Timor

The United Nations’ role in securing peace and promoting democracy has developed in the post-Cold War Era. Only a few of the Unite Nations peacekeeping missions undertaken since 1989 have been deployed in Asia. However, two of the more ambitious operations have been carried out in Asia, namely in Cambodia in the early 1990s and in East Timor in the late 1990s. Both these operations had mandates that provided the United Nations with the possibility to control the national institutions in peace building attempts; i.e. cases of international administrations. In Cambodia the United Nations carried out its most ambitious operation to that date and the mission undertaken in East Timor was the most extensive and expensive peace building attempted by the United Nations. As such, both operations have served as ‘blueprints’ for future United Nations missions. The paper will study these two cases in-depth, looking specifically at what lessons can be learned, from the mandates, the contexts, the challenges encountered during the operations, and the outcomes. What problems and possibilities can be identified based on how the operations were initiated, planned and implemented