|
How the United Nations Tries to Keep the Peace If you see soldiers wearing sky-blue helmets, they are United Nations peacekeepers. The idea of UN peacekeepers began more than 60 years ago. They were the idea of Canadian Foreign Minister Lester Pearson, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work. The first UN peacekeepers were sent to the Middle East in 1948. They only went to see what was happening, and were not armed. The first armed UN peacekeepers were sent to the Middle East in 1957 when there was a disagreement between the British and Egyptian governments about the Suez Canal. Since then, there have been more than 50 UN peacekeeping operations, many of them since the year 2000. In 2003, there were fifteen, involving nearly 37,000 personnel (soldiers and civilians). UN peacekeepers have included soldiers and other personnel from more than 120 countries. Since 2000, most of the personnel have come from Pakistan, Bangladesh, India and Ghana. There have also been soldiers from China, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Canada, Ireland, Italy and Australia. During the 1990s, eastern European countries such as Poland and the Czech Republic also sent personnel. There have been many UN peacekeeping successes, but also some failures. The UN couldn’t stop a terrible civil war in the African state of Rwanda in 1995, despite warnings of the dangers from nearby states. |
