Failures and Successes of Peacekeeping in Africa

Peacekeeping and peace building undertaken by the UN and the Security Council historically has had mixed results. The deployment of UN peacekeeping troops has tended to be both tortuous and highly problematic because decisions to deploy peacekeeping forces cannot be made without the unanimity of the Security Council's five permanent members (the United States Great Britain France Russia and China). This has made rapid deployment of UN forces very often impossible. In addition the UN peacekeeping missions in Africa did not last long as a result of the fiaskos in the 1990s.