Sir Marrack Goulding Speaks at Birzeit University

The Graduate Institute of International Studies, Birzeit University, hosted a lecture yesterday by Sir Marrack Goulding, former Under Secretary General of the United Nations and currently Warden (President) of St. Antony's College, Oxford University.

Sir Marrack Goulding's lecture was titled, "UN Peace Operations: Lessons of the Last 12 Months". His lecture dealt in particular with the role of UN forces in East Timor, Kosovo, Sierre Leone and the Congo over the last year. During his lecture, Goulding stated that his views on the nature of peace keeping had shifted since he last spoke at Birzeit University last year. "Last year I outlined the necessary features of peace keeping: the consent of the hostile parties, impartiality and the non-use of force except in self-defence. This made peacekeeping fundamentally different from peace enforcement (as in Korea in the 1950s, Kuwait in the early 1990s and Bosnia). I believed that there was no half way house - either peace keeping or enforcement. I've come back today to say that I was wrong. I now believe that it is possible to have something half-way between peace keeping and enforcement. This requires the proper authority from the UN Security Council and has been indicated in the cases of Kosova, East Timor and Sierre Leone. I believe in all of these cases one can identify a distinct technique to manage conflicts different from peace keeping."