"Let's not speculate that all missions were inherently bad or UN peacekeeping is a failure, as we have strong empirical evidence for what worked and what did not," he emphasized.
"In the case of Rwanda during the genocide against [the] Tutsis, that was the worst operation carried out by a UN peacekeeping mission," the expert stressed.
"Historically, peacekeeping missions have failed when the five permanent members of the UN Security Council tried to do peacekeeping half-heartedly. For example, in Rwanda, the UN sent its troops a bit late with too few soldiers with no mandate to use force," he said. "They wanted just to avoid the costs and risks of intervention, and in this case it created a condition for those peacekeeping failures."
"So many reports came up and found that peacekeepers globally tried to respond to one out of five cases in which civilians were threatened and the UN, most of the time, had failed to use force in deadly attacks," he outlined.
"Peacekeeping forces have also been accused of committing human rights abuses, including allegations of sexual abuses (for example, in the DRC). And because of that, not one has resulted in a public conviction, as they have immunity from prosecution," he said.
"In Sierra Leone, UNAMSIL was deployed in 1999 to help bring an end to the country’s near decade of civil war through the implementation of the Lome Peace agreement. For me, the mission in that country was a success for the UN in terms of how successfully the disarmament was conducted, [and the] re-integration of ex-combatants [...]. People may say it was imperfect, but it was widely considered to have done most of what it had been established to do. In the Central African Republic, for example and the DRC, those cases are very crucial to carrying out a genuine peace process for the UN," he stressed.
"In my opinion, if we need to have a well functioning UN system, there is a need for UN reform with the UN having clear peace mandates with clear political strategies.The UN needs to improve its peacekeepers' safety by increasing more professional training to its troops and also to those civilians in mission areas," he said.
"If Africans want to manage their conflicts properly on the continent, they need to think of a better solution such as good coordination and mechanisms for preventing and managing conflict," Buchanan said. "Having a good partnership between the UN and Africa does not stop shared responsibility."