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Bringing the Concept to Life

Finally, I would like to include as peace-building the activities of the
international community in terms of disarmament. Indeed, in this post-Cold
War period, a discrepancy has appeared between considerably reduced needs
for military equipment and the existing productive capacity of the industry.
Overproduction feeds the illicit traffic of arms, in particular of light
conventional weapons, and poses a serious threat to international security. Any
activity aimed at curbing or banning altogether the production and sales of
such weapons, may be deemed "Peace-building”. The efforts of the
international community to ban antipersonnel landmines which culminated
last week in the signature of the Treaty of Ottawa by more than 120 countries,
were definitely of the peace-building kind.

g) Conflict management

Crisis management entails modulating one's policy and operational
responses during a conflict, so as to minimize the damaging effect of the
conflict and maximize the prospects for future solutions.

Within the United Nations, this means preventing situations from getting
out of control and erupting into open warfare, as well as curtailing conflicts in
an orderly way if they do break out. Concrete examples could be found in the
action of the United Nations Peace-keeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP) or
of the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) in the
Golan. In both cases, the UN presence, although prolonged, is effective in
preventing the eruption of a full-fledged conflict.

But one of the most important element of conflict management is to make
sure that the principles of humanitarian law which are embodied in The Hague
and Geneva Conventions are duly observed in conflict situation. These codes
of conducts on the treatment of military personnel and civilian populations,
as well as on the use on certain types of weapons need to be given wider
publicity among elected officials and military leaders around the world.
Efforts to promote educational campaigns on these matters should be
reinforced. The upcoming 100 anniversary of The Hague convention and the
50th anniversary of the Geneva Conventions could serve to give higher
visibility to international humanitarian law.

Before closing this review of United Nations peace operations, I would like
to emphasize again the fact that Human Rights is a fundamental component of
any peace operation. United Nations assistance in this matter may include the

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