The UN and Human Rights, Who Guards the Guardians?

Verdirame’s question ‘who guards the guardians?’ is more than timely. As the number of UN peacekeeping operations has increased enormously in the past 20 years, so has the number of violent acts against populations by peacekeepers. Scandals about peacekeepers’ violence against exactly those people they are supposed to protect have in recent years tarnished peacekeeping in the Congo, in Somalia, in Haiti, in Sierra Leone and Liberia and other places. It is, indeed, high time that the question is asked about what exactly the legal framework of peacekeeping is, and particularly of its practice on the ground.