Closing the Gap Between Promises and Outcomes: How Moral Frameworks Contribute to the Realisation of United Nations Deployment Objectives

Abstract

This Chapter is written in an era in which the United Nations (UN) routinely deploys Missions to environments that satisfy the armed conflict threshold. Such Missions often require personnel to employ significant levels of force, whether to safeguard mission and humanitarian personnel, to protect civilians, to neutralise violent armed groups or, in pure self-defence. But use as well as non-use of force can readily frustrate the very objectives these troops are deployed to uphold, in turn creating gaps between the Promises they make and the Outcomes they actually secure. On the other hand, current Missions such as MINUSMA in Mali have proven to be amongst the deadliest for UN troops in the entire history of UN Peacekeeping. The thin line between use and non-use of force must therefore be trodden with utmost care. This Chapter tries to find answers to this dilemma from a moral perspective and considers how the peculiar nature of the morality of resort to force by the UN influences that of its use of force. It assesses why the latter should be calibrated or adjusted to comply with the former, and how this can consequently channel UN troop conduct towards the objectives pursued through deployment. It is only where these realities are understood and addressed, the Chapter submits, that the aforementioned Gaps between Promises and Outcomes can be redressed and closed.

Citation

Ekanayake, C. (2020), "Closing the Gap Between Promises and Outcomes: How Moral Frameworks Contribute to the Realisation of United Nations Deployment Objectives", Schwartz, M. and Harris, H. (Ed.) War, Peace and Organizational Ethics (Research in Ethical Issues in Organizations, Vol. 23), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 49-71. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1529-209620200000023004