10:00:00 Various
shots, UN Peacekeepers (UN File footage)
Guide Voice: UN
Peacekeepers; easily identified by their blue headgear and
currently active in a number of the World's major trouble spots,
though not, as yet, in Iraq. With the end of military operations in
Iraq, attention is now focused on peacekeeping and many
governments, and individuals, believe that only the United Nations
can effectively undertake this role.
00:22 SOT: Professor Michael Clarke,
Director , International Policy Institute, King's College, London
- "Lots of countries in Europe, and the United
States itself, have the capacity to do peacekeeping and some of
them do it really very well, but the essence of peacekeeping is
legitimacy and only the United Nations can really confer
international legitimacy. And so, although from time to time,
countries and at the moment the United States, would prefer not to
use the UN for peacekeeping and peace support operations,
ultimately they always come back to the UN and so, what we're
trying to achieve, I think, in the international world is a
sensible balance between the physical capacities of those countries
that know how to run peace keeping operations and have learnt a
great deal about this and the legitimising capacity of the United
Nations".
01:03 c.u.
stacked copies of "A Case for Change" reports
wide
of reports
GV
launch at King's College
c.u
Nicola Dahrendorf
c.u.
cover of report
various
shots from interior of reports showing headings
graphic
showing UN Peacekeeping operations.
Highlights
locations featured in report.
Guide Voice: A Review of
Peace Operations: A Case for Change, a substantial and incisive
review of UN peace operations has been launched by the Conflict
Security & Development Group at King's College London. Funded
by the governments of Canada, Germany, Norway, Sweden and the
United Kingdom the review provides the most up-to-date assessment
of the realities of peacekeeping operations at a time when inside
knowledge is at a premium.
Based on UN operations in East Timor,
Kosovo, Sierra Leone, as well as on a real time 'snapshot' study of
the ongoing situation in Afghanistan, the aim of the review is to
provide in depth analysis and offer concrete recommendations for
action.
01:46 SOT: Ms Nicola Dahrendorf,
Director of the Conflict Security & Development Group, King's
College, London - "The idea was really to do as
comprehensive a review of peace operations as possible, to do a
comparative study, looking at what works and what doesn't work,
with a view to doing an analysis but also to come up with very
practical recommendations of how things could be changed and how to
chip away at all these obstacles to learning lessons and
implementing learning lessons."
02:11 Various
shots - launch of report
(Pan
along panel right to left - Prof. Michael Clarke; Professor Sir
Lawrence Freedman, Professor of War Studies, King's College,
London; Ms. Nicola Dahrendorf; Mr Mark Dalton, Kosovo Team Leader
for the Review)
Guide Voice: The report
assesses peace operations based on four key criteria; relevance,
preparedness, effectiveness and efficiency offering observations
and recommendations for peacekeeping throughout the world; but how
relevant is it to current concerns?
02:27 SOT: Prof. Michael Clarke
- "The learning process between the military
& international community more generally; the international
organisations, national governments acting in their respective
ways, the NGO community; that relationship between the military on
the one hand and the international community bon the other is one
that requires constant learning. A great deal of learning has been
done over the last 10 years but these problems you never learn
about once, the problem is iterative; we have to keep on learning
& keep on reinforcing our learning and I think a lot of lessons
have been learned but not fully absorbed in the situation in
Iraq".
03:04 Hands
leafing through report
Guide Voice: The report
shows there are lessons to be learnt, so are UN Peacekeepers still
relevant at this time?
03:11 SOT: Ms. Nicola Dahrendorf
- "The question as to whether UN Peacekeepers are
still relevant is obviously enormously topical at the moment but I
think the question has to be broader - Is the UN still relevant? I
think what this report we've just put together advocates very
strongly is that it's not a UN bashing exercise it is very much
that the UN has a terribly important role to play and it's really
only as good as the governments that empower it and enable it to
function properly, it's not a body by itself it's a forum of a
number of member states and I think that mustn't be
forgotten".
03:49 SOT: Lord Wallace of Saltaire.
Liberal Democrat spokesperson in the House of Lords on Foreign
Affairs - "The United States is now
overwhelmingly the world's dominant military power but power has to
be used with constraint and there's a huge amount of difference
between power and legitimacy; so to re-establish law and order
within one state, without upsetting the neighbours, requires a
multi-lateral operation; the UN is the only body which can provide
that. It hasn't been very effective in many situations in the
1990's, there are some painful lessons to learn about the weakness
of the UN peacekeeping operations - the need for more effective
planning - but that is the only way forward".
04:38 End
