UN Mediation in Cyprus, 1964–65: Setting a Precedent for Peacemaking?

Abstract

Throughout the period since the establishment of the UN, international mediation has been regarded as a significant tool of conflict management generally aimed at restoring, preserving, or fine-tuning the international status quo.¹ Within the framework of the UN Charter international mediation is a diplomatic device which forms part of the UN’s armoury against conflict, and yet UN-sponsored mediation has generally failed to live up to its promise, given the importance ascribed to it in the UN Charter. The reasons for this are broad, ranging from the fact that the Charter itself does not yet (and may never) completely underpin the international system, to the lack of will of disputants to compromise under its terms.² It cannot be ignored, however, that the end of the Cold war has only increased the potential contribution that UN mediation can play as the balance of terror recedes, and the nature of states and sovereignty changes. As this chapter argues, this is especially so with respect to ethnic conflicts within a state, which may have spilt across a region. Yet UN mediation as a tool of conflict management has had little to celebrate. The case of UN mediation in Cyprus from 1964 to 1965, and the subsequent Secretary General’s mission of good offices, illustrates many of the difficulties which UN mediation, and peacemaking more generally, has proven susceptible to.