The Development of UN Peacekeeping: A study of human security and robustness in peacekeeping then and now

Abstract: United Nations (UN) peacekeeping principles affect all peacekeeping, thus it is important to under-stand their development. Many important changes in peacekeeping concern robustness and human security. This paper investigates developments in these two areas and their interrelation by means of a literature review, document analysis and case studies of two contemporary UN peacekeeping mis-sions. It identifies three generations in UN peacekeeping marked by changes in human security and robustness and relates these changes to the concept of sovereignty. Further, it identifies human secu-rity as the main motivation behind increasingly robust UN peacekeeping and finds that robust peacekeeping can, but does not necessarily, lead to greater human security.