The integrated mission has come into existence
in the face of modern "total war", where the classic UN peacekeeping
and humanitarian responses proved insufficient to support a sustainable
war to peace transition. Integration is designed to streamline UN peace
support processes and ensure that the objectives of all UN forces and agencies
are channelled towards a common overarching goal. It is an approach
that makes good organizational sense, but it is one that has raised significant
objections from the humanitarian community, who have serious reservations
about the placement of the UN humanitarian agencies under the same control
structure as the political and military components of peace operations.
Throughout the 1990's, the reputation
of humanitarian action as a moral "good" was co-opted by world
leaders and academics who sought to cast "just" military intervention
as "humanitarian" and thus apolitical in nature. For all
their ideological similarities, however, peacekeeping and humanitarian
assistance are two clearly distinct forms of action which often manifest
divergent objectives and priorities.
This work examines the challenges inherent
in integrated mission management, and seeks to identify ways in which the
humanitarian and peacebuilding communities might compromise in order to
build trust and maximize the benefits of integration in UN peacekeeping
efforts.