International Peace Missions and the Prevention of Ill-Treatment: Practical Challenges and Proposed New Approaches

The challenges connected with preventing ill-treatment in detention facing United Nations’ (UN’s) peace operations cannot be understood without analyzing the broader context of why the rule of law is so weak in the host country. The chapter examines how the UN has traditionally approached the rule of law programming and identifies several key flaws in its analysis of the problem, the execution of its programs, and the identification of priorities, including in the approach to preventing ill-treatment. Several proposals are made to fix this, with the central theme being that the UN needs to change the way it is doing business in the realm of peace operations.