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Peacekeeping was established during the cold war as a way of resolving conflicts between states. United Nations (UN) stationed several military intervention operations to prevent future wars, genocides, and maintain peace. Peacekeeping is part of a country’s identity not only to maintain peace and security but also to protect and promote human rights as well as assist in restoring the rule of law.

All countries have a provision for maintaining collective global security. This article highlights the pros and cons of peacekeeping in a country.

Pros:

1. Save lives: Peacekeeping focuses on providing a safe environment for people, better lives, and helping them to rebuild what was destroyed during a war.

2. Promote human rights: Peacekeepers protect civilians and also ensure the rights of individuals are protected.

3. End wars: Peacekeeping helps in promoting political, socio-economic, and security conditions suitable for maintaining peace in war-torn regions and helping the country become resilient to future wars.

4. Promote economic development: UN Peacekeeping mission plays a vital role in providing a bridge in the stability and development of the nation. The missions deployed not only bring long-term peace but also lead to increased development projects.    

5. Social development: Peacemaking helps build local and international relationships among nations as well as improve the quality of life among people.

6. Job creation: Peacekeeping offers job opportunities to various professionals. UNEPS deploys a team of peacemakers specialized in human rights, policing, conflict resolution among other professionals.

7. Secure world: Peacekeeping helps create a secure, diplomatic, and prosperous world for the nation and international community. It reduces the risk of new warfare.

8. Multinational in nature: Peacekeeping operations involve the global sharing of resources, finances, and personnel. Staff members experienced in post-conflict peacebuilding are deployed in various nations to promote peace.

9. Provision of social amenities: Some peacekeepers are concerned with providing humanitarian aid to the affected people like providing food and other basic needs, building schools and hospitals for the communities.

10. Reduce conflicts: Peacekeeping is essential for countries not only in reducing conflict but also in addressing the root cause of conflict and empowering national authorities to implement the peace operation for the interest of all.

Cons:

1. Meeting demand for recruiting skilled peacekeepers: There is a big challenge of recruiting skilled personnel in various specialized fields to be deployed in regions involved in conflicts.

2. Late donors: Major contributors to the peacekeeping budget often send their contributions late affecting the process.

3. Expensive: Peacekeeping operations require a lot of financing and military base support which is very expensive making it difficult to maintain peace in some areas.

4. Time-consuming: Peace operations take some months to organize and also no standing force is available to take immediate action to prevent any war or disaster escalating out of control.

5. Human rights abuse: There are several reports on the abuse of human rights by the UN peacekeepers. Some countries recorded a rapid rise in prostitution and human trafficking.

6. Attacks against peacekeeping: If a peacekeeping agreement between nations is faced with several factions and one faction does not adhere to the agreement, it results in a war zone with peacekeepers.

7. Lack of political ownership of peacekeeping: Most peacekeeping troops are deployed from developed nations and this creates an imbalance between the nations with authority to order the troops and those supplying the troops. This results in a lack of political ownership since those with authority are not directly involved in the implementation process.

8. Cultural differences: People deployed to maintain peace comes from a variety of military cultures and different training backgrounds. Maintaining a common code of conduct and discipline for this group of people can be challenging.

9. Limited resources: Peacekeepers need field medical facilities, air support, movement control operations and all these resources are limited.

10. Threat from non-state actors: Security threats from non-state actors and terrorism affected peacekeeping strategies.