Project:About
Welcome to the Peacekeeping References Wiki!
Who created this website?
This website was created by Eugene Chen in September 2018. Eugene is currently Director of the Prevention and Peacebuilding Program at the NYU Center on International Cooperation. His research focuses on the interplay of substantive policy, intergovernmental politics, and bureaucratic processes at the United Nations.
Prior to joining NYU, Eugene worked as a consultant on issues such as peacebuilding financing, United Nations transitions, and climate action in United Nations peace operations. He previously worked in the United Nations Secretariat in the Executive Office of the Secretary-General, the United Nations Mission for Justice Support in Haiti, the Department of Field Support, and the Department of Peacekeeping Operations. Earlier in his career, Eugene served as lead negotiator for the U.S. government at the United Nations on subjects including peacekeeping financing and cross-cutting policy issues, the scales of assessments, and institutional reform.
Why does this website exist?
The United Nations is an extremely complex organization. Much of how the bureaucracy and intergovernmental processes work is based on a mix of tradition, mythology and a labyrinthine set of resolutions, regulations and rules. Compounding these challenges is the fact that navigation of official documentation is far from intuitive.
This website is intended to make it easier to understand the nuts and bolts of United Nations peacekeeping operations. This is not an exhaustive resource. Eugene has taken every effort to provide references to official documents or internal policies, but this website is not an authoritative reference.
Who is this website for?
This website has its origins in a collection of post-it notes and gradually grew to include a list of commonly-referenced documents and a set of handover notes. At some point, Eugene decided to translate all of these materials into a wiki format, where it would be much more easily searchable. There is little method to the madness when it comes to the order in which pages are added. The subjects covered are ones of interest to Eugene.
Putting the material into a public wiki has the secondary benefit of allowing others to benefit from the information (and reducing the amount of time the webmaster spends fielding questions from inside and outside the United Nations about various esoteric topics).
What does the URL mean?
"Casque bleu" is "blue helmet" in French.[1] The blue helmet has been associated with United Nations peacekeeping operations since the deployment of the United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) in 1956[2].
When is this website updated?
Whenever Eugene has time (or feels like doing so).
References
- ↑ General Assembly 2 (I) of 1 February 1946 established English and French as working languages of the Secretariat and paragraph 59 of General Assembly resolution 70/9 of 13 November 2015 established multilingualism as a core value of the Organization.
- ↑ "What is the origin of the blue helmets worn by UN peacekeepers?" Dag Hammarskjöld Library website. http://ask.un.org/faq/209615