They are professional soldiers, civilian police and military observers from any member country of the UN. These countries also provide supplies, transportation, telecommunications, and administrative help, amongst other things.

There are different types of intervention, some more discrete than others:

Observation/monitoring only, for example of Cuban troops leaving Angola or of the Iran-Iraq ceasefire in 1991.

Assisting a country to independence, for example in Namibia 1978— 1989.

Armed intervention, for example in the Suez Canal region 1956—1967 to keep Egypt and Israel apart and supervise the withdrawal of troops from the UK, France and Israel.

There have been 56 UN peacekeeping operations in total since 1948, although over 30 of those have happened since 1990.

Two of these operations have in fact never stopped since 1948: the interventions in the Arab/Israeli conflict following the foundation of the state of Israel, and in the dispute between Pakistan and India over the Kashmir region.

Another that has been going on for over forty years is on the divided island of Cyprus, where peace has been maintained between Greek and Turkish Cypriots since March 1964.

      Wherever there is conflict in the world and enemies have agreed to let a third party or neutral force come in to try and maintain the peace, it is usually the familiar blue helmets of the United Nations that we see on the scene.

The actual definition of peacekeeping is a bit unclear and it was never written into the original UN Charter, but it goes something like «using military personnel from different countries under the command of the UN to control and resolve armed conflicts either between or within states». Peacekeeping is neither just finding out the facts nor full-scale military intervention, but something in between.

Over the last ten years it has become clear that for peacekeeping to work certain things must already be in place — the conflicts must actually have finished and there must be a genuine desire for peace on both sides. The peacekeeping force must have clear international support and a mandate that shows it is strictly neutral; and it needs adequate resources to do the job.