UN Peace Operations

UNITED NATIONS -- When Nick Birnback took on his assignment as a UN peacekeeper in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1998, an elderly Serbian couple had been gruesomely murdered in the western town of Drvar. 

Locals blamed ethnic Croats for the crime. As Birnback recalls, ethnic tensions boiled over quickly, with the peacekeepers caught in the middle of the riots.

BAGHDAD — The top U.S. military commander in Iraq says U.N. peacekeepers may be needed after American troops leave in 2011 if tensions between Kurds and Arabs aren't resolved.

Army Gen. Ray Odierno said the hope is that Kurdish security forces will have combined with the Arab-dominated Iraqi Army by then and the peacekeepers wouldn't be necessary.

KINSHASA, July 3 (Xinhua) -- The new UN force for stabilization of the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUSCO) which has taken over from the UN mission in DR Congo (MONUC) should immediately go into insecurity prone zones of South and North Kivu in the east of the country, a local official has said.

According to the president of the South-Kivu civil society groups Cyprien Birhingingwa who was speaking on Friday in Kinshasa, this will help to bring back peace to these zones and give confidence to the people to return to their homes.

July 1 (Reuters) - Democratic Republic of Congo this week celebrates 50 years of independence from Belgium but attention will soon turn to elections due next year.

The polls will be the second since the end of the war of 1998-2003 which drew in six foreign armies and resulted in the deaths of five million. But the country is still seeking political stability, battling economic woes and must decide on the future role of United Nations peacekeepers in ending simmering conflicts.

Here are some factors to watch.

This week marks 50 years of independence for the Democratic Republic of the Congo – but a brutal conflict continues in the east with severe civilian suffering since the 1990s. More than 5 million people have died as a consequence of a war widely regarded as the deadliest since the second world war.

KHARTOUM June 29 (Reuters) - Two rival Arab tribes have signed a peace deal in Sudan's Darfur region, peacekeepers said on Tuesday, raising hopes for an end to fighting that has killed more than 200 people since March.
Leaders from the Misseriya and Rizeigat groups signed a reconciliation deal in the West Darfur town of Zalingei on Monday, said Darfur's U.N./African Union UNAMID mission in a statement.
 

29 June 2010 – The head of the United Nations Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) today welcomed the appointment of an independent body that will oversee preparations for a referendum on whether southern Sudan should secede from the rest of the country.
Haile Menkerios, who is also the Secretary-General’s Special Representative, congratulated the Southern Sudan Referendum Commission members who were endorsed earlier today by the country’s National Assembly.

KINSHASA, Congo — Fabulous minerals. Magnificent music. Great cuisine. A landscape that stretches from lush rain forest to Swiss-looking mountains. And a people still mired in violence and misery a half century after independence from Belgium.
Congo's government is marking the 50th anniversary on Wednesday with pomp and circumstance, and the invited guests include Belgian King Albert II and the U.N. secretary-general.
 

Russia airlifted about 120 personnel to Sudan as part of an international peacekeeping operation there, the Defense Ministry said.
Russian peacekeepers have been in Sudan since April 2006, providing transport services for UN military observers, escorting freight shipments and carrying out rescue and other operations. They are rotated every six months.

UNITED NATIONS, June 29 (APP): Efforts are underway for the release of a United Nations-contracted cargo ship, which was detained by India last week as it sailed towards Pakistan with decommissioned weaponry from a UN peacekeeping mission in Liberia, a UN official said Monday.  The MV Aegean Glory, a 500-foot-long Panama-registered ship, was seized by Indian customs authorities on Friday 50 kilometres south of Kolkata, claiming suspicious military cargo.The UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) “is working closely with Indian authorities to ensure the release of the cargo and