E-Mail Exchanges with Sir Brian Urquhart (2000): Peacekeeping

E-Mail Exchange with Sir Brian Urquhart (2000): Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley

E-Mail Exchange with Sir Brian Urquhart, former Undersecretary General of the UN, with students at Marin Academy High School, 5/31/00

What general guidelines do you think the UN should follow in order to improve its peacekeeping missions in the future?

JP and Matt

I think the Security Council in the future must devise mandates for UN forces which at least have some relevance to the situation on the ground. It must also give UN peacekeeping missions both the authority and resources to carry out the task it has given them. This is particularly relevant to Sierra Leone, where a completely inadequate force was put in to monitor a peace agreement which only existed on paper. Sierra Leone, incidentally, was a situation where a highly trained and properly led rapid reaction force would have made all the difference.