Mechanisms and Measures of the International Legal System to Protect United Nations Peacekeepers

Considering the growing number of human casualties that peacekeeping operations have entailed in recent years, protection and support for peacekeeping forces have drawn further attention. There are fundamental questions in this regard. What are the measures and mechanisms of the international legal system to protect UN peacekeepers? How successful have they been in protecting these forces? This descriptive-analytical study hypothesized that the international legal system used the Security Council resolutions, the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), the Convention on the Safety of United Nations and Associated Personnel (1994), the Geneva Conventions of 1949, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (1998), and other documents to devise certain mechanisms and measures for protecting UN peacekeepers. Nevertheless, these mechanisms and measures have failed to yield efficient and satisfactory outcomes as expected. Although all member states are obliged to obey the resolutions of the UN Security Council, the wording and tone of some of these resolutions do not oblige the member states to do so. The SOFA is a bilateral agreement with a limited scope of action in most cases. Moreover, the Convention on the Safety of United Nations and Associated Personnel is a multilateral agreement that has not been welcomed and supported properly by member states, especially those that host UN peacekeepers. Finally, it is difficult to generalize the provisions and protocols of the Geneva Conventions (1949) and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (1998) to the issue of protecting UN peacekeepers.