Friends Of Europe Podcasts

When a country’s security is threatened, UN peacekeepers must intervene only after politicians have exhausted all possibilities for conflict prevention. This key conclusion emerged in the first debate in a new series of ‘Lessons from history’, held in Brussels by Friends of Europe on 19 March 2019. Featuring three peace and security experts, focused on UN operations in Africa, the event aimed to better prepare for future crises. “We can learn lessons from UN peacekeeping operations in Africa, home to around half the UN’s work in that field,” said the moderator Jamie Shea, Senior Fellow, Friends of Europe and former Deputy Assistant Secretary General at NATO. He wanted to look at Rwanda and Liberia, respectively considered as a failure and success in UN peacekeeping. What more can the EU and NATO do to support peacekeeping on this continent and beyond? All three panellists agreed that countries and peacekeepers must prioritise the prevention of conflicts, with intervention only a last resort. That is more