Over the past two weeks we’ve seen an escalation of the long border- conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. This has caught the attention of the international community, especially the UN. And a few days ago, the UN chief had condemned the continuing escalation of violence and called for an urgent ceasefire. Luckily, an agreement on a humanitarian ceasefire was announced yesterday in Moscow by the Foreign Ministers of the Russian Federation, Azerbaijan and Armenia.
In promoting peace and security during a war or conflict, diplomacy must be at its best, that is finding immediate and viable solutions. So thanks to the mediation of the Russian federation, the two countries agreed on a truce starting from October 10 according to the Russian Foreign Ministry. It is reported that both countries are yet to decide the exact parameters of the truce in the disputed enclave Nagorno-Karabakh. But the ceasefire is for humanitarian reasons to exchange prisoners of war and other detainees and bodies of those killed.
When Secretary-General Guterres welcomes the agreement, it is a way of saying that the UN is still in the business of peacekeeping and preventing wars. Armenia and Azerbaijan are committed ” to begin substantive negotiations under the auspices of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), through its Minsk Group.” And currently, France, Russia and the United States are presiding the OSCE’s Minsk Process, which promotes peaceful resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. So, almost the UNSC is valuably represented.
Although the UN chief further appealed to the international community to support the ceasefire agreement and also urged countries to continue to encourage the sides to resolve their differences through peaceful means, the effectiveness of the UN to ending wars is still questionable as the Severine Auteserre’s piece pointed out.
Marcus,
As is often the case when one is trying to address a fast-developing issue, it appears, unfortunately, that the truce may already have broken down. I learned this when reading the papers today. Hopefully, however, it will be re-established soon. The UN has been successful as a mediator in some situations (e.g., it is currently trying to mediate the civil war in Libya), but not in others. For example, it could never agree to get involved during the Balkan civil war, and that was eventually dealt with by a “coalition of the willing,” which were mainly members of NATO. There are, of course, UN peacekeeping operations that have been going on for many, many years in the Middle East and Africa, in particular. But it is unclear how successful they have been.
–Professor Wallerstein