•  Date and time: September 17, 2021 (Friday) / 5PM
• Presenter: Kyoung Seok Ha (Korea University)
  
• Discussant: Seung Joon Paik (Korea University)
• Organized by: Peace & Democracy Institute, Department of Political Science and International Relations

On September 17, 2021, Korea University’s Peace & Democracy Institute held the 12th Soodang Security Colloquium.

Dr. Ha of Korea University’s Ilmin International Relations Institute participated as a presenter, and Dr. Paik of Korea University’s Peace & Democracy Research Institute participated as a debater.

In colloquium, Dr. Ha announced, <Is the use of force effective during U.N. peacekeeping operations (PKO)?>. The United Nations Peacekeeping Operations (PKO) is one of the most powerful means of providing security to countries that are unable to transition from conflict to peace early through political and peacebuilding support. However, existing academic discussions focused on the justification and effectiveness of armed intervention at the regional or single state level, pointing to the failure of PKOs due to structural limitations and lack of organizational capabilities. Therefore, there was a limitation in which sufficient case review and discussion on the conditions under which the U.N. PKO-led use of force was effectively carried out, and what limitations and possibilities of the use of force were not made.

Accordingly, the author deals with ‘the use of force in PKO activities’ and argues that the use of force in PKO can be effective when the organizational capabilities of PKO forces and the cooperation of actors such as local countries, organizations, and citizens are all secured. To prove this, among 12 peacekeeping activities since 1999, the cases of PKOs that attempted to “force peace” through actual use of force, such as Cote d’Ivoire, Haiti, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, were reviewed. As a result, Cote d’Ivoire achieved success both strategically and tactically, with its peacekeepers maintaining strong firepower and high organizational capabilities, and with the cooperation of local collaborators and troops. On the other hand, operations in Haiti initially failed tactically in the face of opposition, causing numerous civilian casualties due to the poor organization of peacekeepers and the lack of local intelligence. Later, however, the Haitian peacekeepers, who reorganized, used a large number of human resources and gathered local information, carried out a number of operations, and, unlike earlier failures, were able to achieve tactical success, minimizing civilian damage. Finally, the Democratic Republic of the Congo is the most notable case in this study, and early in the operation, peacekeepers quickly repelled rebels with high organizational capabilities based on strong firepower and cooperation from a number of actors in the region and surrounding countries. However, despite the initial success, due to the disappearance of interests of neighboring countries and conflicts with the parties, both strategically and strategically failed in the subsequent operations despite being the highest level of organizational capacity in history. Through the review of these three cases, the author of this study emphasized that securing cooperation with actors such as local countries, organizations, and citizens in addition to strengthening the organizational capacity of peacekeepers in the use of force in PKO activities will increase the effectiveness of PKO.