On the 11th of May a guest speaker came to our lesson.

It was a veteran named Eric Schoonen. Eric gave a

presentation about his experiences as a soldier. When
he was 19 years old he went on the first peace keeping
misson (UNFIL) to Lebanon. He was 3 months in
Lebanon.
He told about all kind of problems that occurred like rats
and other animals in the bathroom and about they
heavy work they had to do. Normally there were more
people on the post where they stayed so they had to
work twice as hard. They worked 24 hours straight and
after that they had 6 hours of rest. In those 6 hours they
had to clean and repair their weapons if there was time
left they could have some hours of sleep. The living circumstances and the
hygiene were very bad. They hadnt had much water so they only took a shower
once in 3 weeks.
Because it was a peace keeping mission they werent allowed to shoot. Only
when someone aimed at them. Sometimes this was a hard rule to follow. He
experienced that rebels kidnapped an Lebanon boy. Eric and some other soldiers
had to convince the rebels to led to Lebanon boy go without shooting.
He ended his presentation without the quote:
A hairdresser can be a teacher and a barkeeper can be doctor but a veteran
you are forever

On the next page there is a article which is about success and failures of peace
keeping missions.
The UN General Assembly session opened on September 15. This year the
organisation celebrates its 70th birthday but how has the UN had an impact on
the world's conflicts?
United Nations peacekeeping operations began in 1948 and the light blue
helmets and berets have been deployed to many of the world's trouble spot from
Papua New Guinea to Haiti ever since, with varying levels of effectiveness.
An internal UN study last year found that UN peacekeeping missions routinely
avoid using force to protect civilians who are under attack, intervening in only 20
per cent of cases despite being authorised to do so by the UN Security Council.
While some peacekeeping missions perform adequately, others have failed to
protect civilians notably at Srebrenica, where Dutch peacekeepers watched on
powerless as thousands of men were murdered.
Of the 69 UN peacekeeping missions over the past 68 years, there have been
some notable failures and cases of successful intervention.
Where peacekeepers have succeeded - and failed
Srebrenica
On July 11, 1995, towards the end of Bosnia's 1992-95 war, Bosnian Serb forces
swept into the eastern Srebrenica enclave and executed 8,000 Muslim men and
boys in the days that followed, dumping their bodies into pits. It was the worst
massacre in post-Second World War European history. The UN had previously
declared the town one of the safe areas, to be "free from any armed attack or
any other hostile act". 600 Dutch infantry were supposed to be protecting
thousands of civilians who had taken refuge from earlier Serb offensives in north-
eastern Bosnia.
As Serb forces began shelling Srebrenica, Bosnian Muslim fighters in the town
asked for the return of weapons they had surrendered to the UN peacekeepers
but their request was refused. The Dutch peacekeepers were obliged to watch as
the killings began. The failure led in part to the creation of the United Nations
Peacebuilding Commission and set the West on a new course of 'liberal
interventionism'.

Potocari memorial, Srebrenica, Bosnia and Hercegovina

Rwanda
Another major failing of the UN peacekeeping organisation was not doing more to
prevent the 1994 Rwandan genocide that left up to one million people dead. A
1999 inquiry found that the UN ignored evidence that the genocide was planned
and refused to act once it had started. More than 2,500 UN peacekeepers were
withdrawn after the murder of ten Belgian soldiers. In one case, the
peacekeeping forces deserted a school where Tutsis were taking shelter
hundreds of people inside were immediately massacred.
Kofi Annan, who was then head of UN peacekeeping forces was accused of failing
to pass on warnings of the massacre. UN soldiers did not return to Rwanda until
June, by which time hundreds of thousands of people were dead. The UN was
accused of leaving Rwanda to its fate.
Somalia
The UN operation was the first time the peacekeeping force had been used for
humanitarian intervention. However, the peacekeepers were met with a hostile
reception in Mogadishu. Several of them were killed and the bodies of dead US
soldiers were paraded through the streets on the orders of the Somali warlords.
When an American Black Hawk helicopter was shot down as part of the Battle of
Mogadishu, the US withdrew its troops. In 1995 the UN withdrew all peacekeeping
troops. It was described at the time by one UN official as "the greatest failure of
the UN in our lifetime".
Sierra Leone
The UN peacekeeping force that operated in Sierra Leone from 1999 to 2005 is
hailed as a success. It was created to help implement a peace agreement after
the countrys devastating civil war.
Mr Ban officially closed the UN offices in Freetown in 2014, declaring a
successful conclusion to the organisations work in helping to bring peace to the
country, calling it a triumph for the people of Sierra Leone after what had been
a decade of warfare. Our blue helmets disarmed more than 75 000 ex-fighters,
including hundreds of child soldiers. The UN destroyed more than 42,000
weapons and 1.2 million rounds of ammunition a potentially deadly arsenal that
is now itself dead, Mr Ban declared.
Burundi
Burundi is also frequently cited as a success story for the UN peacekeeping
operation, helping it recover from decades of ethnic war. Ban Ki-moon, UN
secretary-general, hailed Burundi's substantial progress, overcoming formidable
challenges since the end of the civil war. But in 2014 he extended the
peacekeeping mission for a year to help the country through elections, that took
place earlier in July, and cautioned that the gains made under the UNs watch
were not irreversible.