Introduction: Evolving Challenges and Alternative Perspectives to Peacekeeping in Complex Security Environments

Abstract

Since its inception, the notion that United Nations (UN) peacekeeping represents the organization’s best effort to maintain international peace and security for populations emerging from conflict has been relentlessly queried and challenged. The UN’s institutionalization of peacekeeping was heralded as “a conceptual masterpiece” (Urquhart 1987, p. 133) and since then, peacekeeping has continued to evolve—sometimes successfully, sometimes unsuccessfully—and has continued to develop new mandates and operational techniques in response to the increasingly complex political and physical environments into which peacekeepers are deployed.