Foreword
The Charter of the United Nations gives the UNSecurity Council the power and responsibility to take collective action tomaintain international peace and security. The first UN peacekeeping force wasdeployed in 1948, when the Security Council decided to establish a fieldoperation consisting of 36 unarmed military observers to maintain a fragileArab-Israeli truce. Since then, more than a million individuals ―including soldiers, police officers, and civilians ― have served in 64 UNpeacekeeping operations. As of September 2008, there were 111,612 peacekeepersfrom 119 countries participating in 19 peacekeeping operations in the MiddleEast, Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean. Peacekeepingis based on the…
