Review: Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding: Why Peacekeeping Fails
| Published date | 01 March 2001 |
| Author | Lewis MacKenzie |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070200105600117 |
| Date | 01 March 2001 |
| Subject Matter | Review |
Reviews
travel
expenses
claims
seems
more
important
than
getting
the
'bad
guys.
In
the
concluding
chapter,
Goldstone
links
the
United
Nations
War
Crimes
Tribunals
to
recent
moves
to establish
an
International
Criminal
Court
(ICC).
Goldstone
is
clearly
a
proponent,
and
here
he
details
the
benefits
of
the
ICC.
Indeed,
on
this
subject
at
least,
his
pas-
sion
surfaces:
'Prior
to
World
War
II, the
victims
of
human
rights abus-
es
were
not
the
subject
of
international
concern.
That
has
changed.
No
longer
will
dictators
or
oppressive
governments
be
able
to
violate
the
fundamental
rights
of
their
citizens
with
impunity
... the
twenty-first
century
will
witness
the
growth
of
an
international
criminal justice
sys-
tem
and
the victims
of
war
crimes
will
no
longer
be
ignored'
(p 138).
Throughout
the
book
-
save
for
the
final
chapter
-
Goldstone's
observations
and
reflections
are
primarily
anecdotal.
This
is
both the
book's
weakness
and
its
strength.
The
reader
who
expects
a
thorough
and
searching
examination
of
how
we
as
a
society
or
as
the
interna-
tional
community
go
about
redressing
large scale,
systemic,
human
rights
abuses
will
be
disappointed.
On
the
other
hand,
For
Humanity
does
provide
the
reader
with
a
glimpse
into the rather
charming
and
private
thoughts
of
a
man
who
was
thrust
into
the
centre
of
important
developments.
In
this
context,
it
makes
interesting reading.
Bruce
Elman/University
of
Windsor
WHY
PEACEKEEPING
FAILS
Dennis
C.
Jett
New
York:
St
Martin's,
2000,
xviii,
23
6
pp,
US$49.95,
ISBN
0-312-
22698-5
Almost
forty
years
ago,
while
on
peacekeeping
duty
along
with
a
thou-
sand
other
Canadians
in
the
Gaza
Strip,
I
encountered
a
small
group
of
Canadian tourists
who
had
made
a
wrong
turn
and inadvertently
crossed over
the
border
from
Israel.
On
noticing
my
Canadian
patch
on
the
opposite
sleeve
from
my
United
Nations
badge,
one
of
them
exclaimed:
'Gosh,
I
didn't
know
we
had Canadians
over
here!'
The
days
of
low
profile,
relatively
incident-free
peacekeeping mis-
sions
are
long gone,
probably
more
because
of
the
series
of
failures
in
the
1990s
than
for any
other
reason.
Scholarly
theses
on
the
causes
of
peacekeeping
failures
are
rapidly becoming
a
growth
industry.
Unfortunately,
practical
recommendations,
that
is
ones
that
can
be
INTERNATIONAL
JOURNAL
Winter2000-2001
175
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