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About the Course: In this course, you will learn about the history of United Nations peace operations active between 2000 and mid-2020. It is organized to give students an overview of five main themes. First, the course provides a general summary of major trends and patterns in United Nations peace operations during the twenty-first century. Second, it provides short histories of the more than 30 United Nations peace operations that were active between 2000 and mid-2020. Third, it summarizes the key issues involved in “partnership peacekeeping”, that is, the efforts of the United Nations to develop partnerships with an array of other peace organizations and actors. Fourth, the course provides a synopsis of the main attempts to develop guidelines for United Nations peace operations personnel fit for the twenty-first century. Finally, it summarizes some of the main impacts that United Nations peace operations have had on armed conflict, according to recent academic research. Ten lessons.
About the Author: Paul D. Williams, PhD, is currently a professor at the Elliott School of International Affairs at The George Washington University (United States), where he is also Associate Director of the Security Policy Studies MA programme. Professor Williams received his PhD in international politics from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth (United Kingdom) (2001). He worked previously at the Universities of Warwick and Birmingham (United Kingdom) and has been a visiting scholar at Georgetown University (United States) and the University of Queensland (Australia) (2008) and a visiting professor at Addis Ababa University (Ethiopia). From 2014 to 2015, he was a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, and between 2012 and 2019, he served as Non-Resident Senior Adviser at the International Peace Institute in New York. Professor Williams is the author of several books related to peace operations, including Understanding Peacekeeping (Polity Press, third edition, 2021); Fighting for Peace in Somalia: A History and Analysis of the African Union Mission (AMISOM), 2007–2017 (Oxford University Press, 2018); War and Conflict in Africa (Polity Press, second edition, 2016); and is a co-editor and contributor to The Oxford Handbook of United Nations Peacekeeping Operations (Oxford University Press, 2015).
Number of pages: 193 [English]
Publisher: Peace Operations Training Institute [22-12-2020]