May 29, 1948 - First UN Peacekeeping - a podcast by Stephen Hammond

First United Nations peacekeeping operation leads to annual day of recognition. The United Nations officially came into existence on October 24, 1945. Its Universal Declaration of Human Rights, ratified in 1948, is one of its most important documents. In order to protect human rights, the UN marked peacekeeping as an early priority. The first peacekeeping operation was established for the Middle East in 1948, along with the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization. On May 29, 1948, operations began with unarmed military observers in Palestine, an assignment that continues today. Since then, dozens of peacekeeping operations have involved thousands of troops in monitoring ceasefires and buffer zones, and serving as military observers, disarmament experts, civilian police, human rights workers, humanitarian workers and civil administrators. At its peak in 1993, the UN had 70,000 troops deployed around the world. Although peacekeeping is not mentioned in the UN Charter, the Security Council provides the mandate and defines the tasks. Nine of the Security Council’s 15 members must vote on a peacekeeping mission and none of the five permanent members against it, for it to go ahead. In 2002, the General Assembly voted to establish May 29th as the International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers, an annual commemoration kicked off in 2003.

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