8. Getting Out and Afterward

This chapter discusses how peacekeeping missions are brought to a conclusion and what happens, or fails to, at that point. Because there is no standard definition of success that fits all three types of peacekeeping, each of them will be considered individually. One way to define success is the fulfillment of the PKO’s mandate. Since mandates are vague, focusing on them exclusively ignores the common purposes of PKOs and limits comparisons among them. Some have argued that better indicators of success are whether the PKO limited or prevented hostilities and succeeded at conflict resolution. The two are not the same. The war can end, but the conflict can go on. There will be a greatly reduced level of violence, but the country’s people will still suffer from poverty, corruption and repression by the same ruling elites. There are essentially three possible outcomes for a peacekeeping operation: outright failure, indefinite extension and a declaration of success. Under the first outcome, the peacekeepers leave voluntarily, or are forced out, after they fail to achieve all of their objectives, as happened in Somalia and Rwanda. The second outcome could be termed a non-exit strategy, as it describes a situation where a PKO is simply not terminated. The third outcome is when the UN declares victory and departs.