If war is the ultimate chaos unleashed to deliberately exercise extreme human cruelty, peacekeepers are the extraordinary glimmer of humanity and hope.
War is the most extreme of the human experiences, which last in the human mind as ghosts as the International Crime Court for former Yugoslavia put it:
– “This was terrible. The screams. I dream them, you know, sometimes. I wake up with them and I go to sleep with them.”
(Vukovar Hospital Case, ICTY, IT-95-13A, p. 925).
In 1988, the Norwegian Nobel Committee drafted a note explaining why it had decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize to the United Nations Peacekeeping Forces. The Nobel Committee asserted that:
– “Peacekeeping Forces of the United Nations have, under extremely difficult conditions, contributed to reducing tensions where an armistice has been negotiated but a peace treaty has yet to be established.”
The Committee further advanced the idea that one of the reasons to award this international recognition was the fact that “The Peacekeeping Forces are recruited from among the young people of many nations, who, in keeping with their ideals, voluntarily take on a demanding and hazardous service in the cause of peace.”
…..
(Extract of the Prologue, by University Professor (and former UNPROFOR UNMO) Francisco Leandro, on the eBook “Bosnia 95 – Peacekeeping in a War Zone“)
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