The Ukrainian puzzle : pieces of the international community and a human security based approach

Abstract

This thesis will make the case that peacekeeping operations and the doctrinal agenda they require create a strategy that, although boasting a massive bearing on the lives of civilians in conflict, does not afford for peripheral obligations such as the realisation of human security.1 Due to the fact that states have a fundamental responsibility to protect people’s effective gratification of their human security, the international community has to salvage national security and take on a managing responsibility regarding the conflict environment. Proper international peacekeeping operations lead to a reinstatement of the pre-eminence of human security over that of the conflict. Peacekeeping operations can be deemed an appropriate instrument to fulfil human security basic needs. To facilitate an effective response to the intricacy of the conflict environment, it is imperative for states and intergovernmental organizations to cooperate in peacekeeping operations. The approach recommended recognises conflict as one of the causes of deprivation that leads to the detriment of human security . With the aim of identifying the responsibilities of the international community that a modern conflict might require, this thesis contends an alternative peacekeeping theory, ‘a human security based approach to peacekeeping’. The practicability of a human security based approach will be illustrated by concisely applying it to the current humanitarian and security crisis in Ukraine, and challenges inter alia the role of the United Nations, the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. 1 It is of critical importance to emphasize that the term ‘human security’ as understood in the context of this thesis is considered in the scope of reducing the human costs of indirect and/or direct violence, as put forth by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in their ‘Human Development Report’. It is generally considered the ‘most authoritative’ definition of the concept.