2. Armed conflict prevention, management and resolution

Summary

There were several major successes in armed conflict
prevention, management and resolution in 1998. A historic peace
agreement was signed in Northern Ireland, and regionally monitored
peace accords were achieved in the Ecuador-Peru border dispute and in
Papua New Guinea. The attempts by the UN and regional organizations to
support peace settlements or processes were particularly successful in
the Central African Republic, Eastern Slavonia and Guatemala;
precarious in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Sierra Leone and
Tajikistan; and ineffective in halting Angola's slide back into civil
war. Armed conflict subsided with regionally monitored agreements in
Guinea-Bissau and Kosovo, stalemated in an uneasy truce between
Ethiopia and Eritrea, and escalated into regional war in the Democratic
Republic of Congo. Fighting also continued or was resumed in a number
of other countries. 

The international
community continued to direct attention to building capacity for
improved conflict prevention, management and resolution at both the
global and regional levels despite persistent financial constraints.
However, the unity of political will and effort was challenged by
dissension within the UN Security Council over appropriate enforcement
of its decisions and the incipient tendency of regional organizations
to undertake action without UN endorsement or oversight. The largest
peace-
enforcement/ peacekeeping mission
was the NATO-led Stabilization Force in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which
at 33 000 troops was twice as large as all UN operations together. Most
of the regional initiatives continued to stem from Europe and the
Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), with a substantial number
also from African, Latin American and Asian organizations.

Appendix 2A. Multilateral peace MISSIONS, 1997

SUSANNA ECKSTEIN

Appendix 2A presents a table of multilateral peacekeeping
operations in 1997.