The purpose of this master’s thesis is to explain how UN peacekeeping operations work and contribute to the stabilisation and reintegration of failed states into the international community. In general, complex UN peacekeeping operations are quite successful in eliminating violence, but they usually aim to do more than that. Today’s third-generation peacekeeping operations are established to operate in the post-war environment of failed states. Their main objectives are not only to address the root causes that led to violence, but also to create the conditions for positive peace through the construction or reconstruction of functioning and self-sustaining state institutions. This master thesis thus focuses on the effectiveness of peace operations in conflict environments and the challenges or dilemmas that these operations face. These challenges are also illustrated in the case of the peacekeeping operation in the Central African Republic. In doing so, I draw on the assumptions of social constructivism, treating the concepts of conflict and failed states as a social construct and the peacebuilding efforts of peace operations as a process of transforming relations between opposing actors, which depends on changing key aspects of both the identities and interests of these actors.
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