Welcome to Bugema University - E-Learning Platform.

This course is designed to give students a better understanding of the peacekeeping role of the United Nations. The first parts of the course will discuss the institutional mechanism of the UN for peacekeeping operations, the changing nature of peacekeeping, the legal and ethical issues involved in peacekeeping and humanitarian intervention, and a historical overview of the UN peacekeeping function during the Cold War. Then the course will provide brief case studies of the UN humanitarian interventions and peacekeeping/peace-building operations in the last decade of the 20th century and the first decade of the new millennium in Africa, the Balkans and Cambodia. The United Nations peace efforts in East Timor, Afghanistan and Iraq will be discussed in some detail. East Timor, where the UN assumed the sovereignty, was an unprecedented operation. Afghanistan presents an especially interesting case. The UN has been involved in peacemaking, peacekeeping and peace-building in Afghanistan since the early 1980s; and the UN mission in Afghanistan enjoys overwhelming international support. The UN role in Iraq, from the unprecedented Security Council resolutions in the first Gulf War to the awkward relations with the U.S. in the second, also deserves special attention. Towards the end of the course, we will examine the role of the regional organisations in peacekeeping and the new experiment in “hybrid” peacekeeping in Darfur. Lessons learned from Afghanistan, East Timor and other UN peacekeeping operations will also be discussed.