Peacebuilding in Mozambique with special reference to the UN policy on landmine removal

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT:The end of the Cold War had a profound impact on the qualitative and quantitative nature of theUN's peace and security agenda, representing a shift from traditional peacekeeping to a broader,more ambitious and intrusive notion of peacekeeping. This evolution was marked by an expandedUN engagement in a broad range of intra-state conflicts and characterised by UN undertakingstowards aspects of national political and socio-economic reconstruction including the evolutionof humanitarian action.Responding to the expanded United Nations agenda for international peace and security and atthe request of the UN Security Council (UNSC) Boutros Boutros-Ghali prepared the conceptualfoundations of the UN's role in global peace and security in his seminal report, An Agenda forPeace (July, 1992). The Secretary General outlined five inter-connected roles that he projectedthe UN would play in the fast changing context of post-Cold War international politics, namely:preventive diplomacy, peace enforcement, peacemaking, peacekeeping and post-conflict peacebuilding.The UNSG described the newly defined concept of post-conflict peacebuilding as action organised(to) foster economic and social co-operation with the purpose of developing the social,political and economic infrastructure to prevent future violence, and laying the foundations for adurable peace.With specific reference to landmines in An Agenda for Peace the UNSG stressed that peacebuildingfollowing civil war and internal strife must address the serious problem of landmines, whichremained scattered in present or former combat zones. The UNSG underscored that mine action(demining) should be emphasised in terms of reference of peacekeeping operations which iscrucially important in the restoration of activity when peacebuilding is under way.The United Nations involvement in the Mozambican peace process (1992-1995) has been interpretedas the culmination of a major success story in wider peacekeeping in Africa under UN auspices- a category of peace operation, which included peacemaking, peacekeeping, humanitarianassistance, peacebuilding and electoral assistance. Mozambique's peace process has subsequentlybeen cited as a model UN peacekeeping operation which could be adapted to post-conflict situationelsewhere.Within the context of landmines as a threat to post-conflict peacebuilding as articulated by theUNSG in An Agenda for Peace, the study focuses on how the United Nations implemented mineaction initiatives in operationalising the concept of peacebuilding in Mozambique. In this context,the study reviews the UN operation in Mozambique (ONUMOZ) and its capacity, responsivenessand vision in implementing mine action initiatives, both in terms of the operational requirementsof the ONUMOZ peacekeeping mission and the development oflonger-term humanitarian mineaction programmes in Mozambique. To this end, the study views the establishment of a sustainableindigenous mine action capacity as a sine que non for post -conflict peacebuilding.From this perspective, the study interprets the 1999 Mine Ban Treaty Prohibiting the Use, Stockpile,Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction and the rightsand obligations of Mozambique as a State Party to the Treaty as the most appropriate instrumenttowards the creation of an indigenous Mozambican mine action capacity to address the long-termeffects oflandmines on post-conflict peacebuilding.In terms of methodology the approach was historical-analytical and in essence a deductivemethod of research was followed.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University