External Intervention Case Study

“External
Intervention
will prevent a fragile state from collapsing.”
IH
Essay
1
14% of the world’s population lives in fragile states where 1 in 3 people are undernourished. Poverty is widespread in such areas as governments are unable or cannot support their citizens. A fragile state is one that is susceptible to collapse upon conflict. Fragile states often have governments that have begun to show signs of inability deliver core functions, namely security, capacity to manage public resources and the delivery of basic services to the majority of its people. In this essay, I examine, using the case study of Sierra Leone, if external intervention in the form of peacekeeping missions can prevent fragile states from collapsing.
In the 1980s, Sierra

Additionally, this agreement also specifically requested the UN to deploy a peacekeeping force.
ECOMOG’s withdrawal caught the attention of the UN, leading to the establishment of the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) 1999-2001.
On 22 October 1999, the UN Security Council authorized UNAMSIL, deploying 6000 troops on a peacekeeping mission to Sierra Leone. The aim of the mission was to assist various parties in implementing the Lomé agreement, especially the disarmament of rebels and to plan elections. This was the standard procedure of UN peacekeeping missions then, but the critical point that gave the mission potential to succeed was that the Security Council, for the first time, endowed the mission with a mandate to use necessary means to protect civilians when threatened with physical violence. According to the UN peacekeeping principle, previous missions had been ordered to use military force only for self-defense or the in defense of the mandate. In some past cases, this was one reason that led to the failure of the mission.
The first UNAMSIL was a failure. While it the adapted mandate was a step in the right direction, the UN Security Council had overlooked several critical

Firstly, the adaptation of the mandate to allow troops to take a more active role in defending civilians instead of restricting the usage of arms to selfdefense.
Secondly, the quick response by the UN to rectify problems identified, thus increasing the speed of progress. Thirdly, the UN Security Council learnt its lessons from the first UNAMSIL. Specifically, they increased the deployment size after realizing that more troops would be needed to establish a presence in the country, something that they learnt through the first mission’s failure.
While Sierra Leone is still in stages of recovery after the UNAMSIL ended in
2005, the failed state index reports a promising improvement in state legitimacy, security and human rights, all indicators that Sierra Leone is moving away from the brink of collapse. Sierra Leone was ranked 6th in the failed state index in 2006 and has improved to 35th position in 2014. In 2011, the UN reported that democracy had matured in Sierra Leone. The 2012 elections had a high turnout rate, showing the rapid improvement from the authoritarian government prior to the