Finding and Funding the Paths to Peace

Abstract

The peace-keeping budgets have had, over the years, an ambiguous existence and have been the most prominent of targets for discussion and controversy. These were, and continue to be, the most conspicuous activities of the UN, even if their numbers and costs have declined since the heights of the early 1990s and their natures changed considerably. They symbolize one of the central purposes of the establishment of the UN during the Second World War. The opening words of the Charter assert that:

We the Peoples of the United Nations determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind … and for these ends … to ensure, by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods, that armed forces shall not be used, save in the common interest, and to employ international machinery for the promotion of the economic and social advancement of all peoples.